i mean, imho: if you think ~400 words of text constitutes a “wall of text,” then i think you’re functionally illiterate. but that’s just my take.

you’re right to point to that hole in my rhetoric.

truthfully, it is a number i remember seeing widely cited while researching the topic years ago and i don’t have an immediate source to offer you. it largely comes out of studies around the late 80s through the early 00s; and it comes, for the most part, from studies that focused on narrow, immediate groups. think asking students currently taking or freshly out of a course about integrity. more recent research in this field shows that over a lifetime the vast majority of people engage in academically dishonest behaviors at least once and the research tends to focus on that, which is why you tend to see very high numbers reported: they have the caveat of the scope being expanded to lifetimes or careers rather than more momentary snapshots. because basically everyone has done it at some point, statistically speaking. maybe try looking for modern research focusing on serial cheating. those numbers tend to be more in line with the older figures i mention. whether or not that is ethically/statistically significant or not is up to the reader, obviously. i think it is a shift in methodology that looks at flashier and bigger percentages for dubious reasons, personally.

i will make an effort to find you specific sources when i get some time either today or tomorrow but for now you can likely find many of these figures cited by searching for the journal of academic ethics using ERIC, focusing on earlier sources to find the methodology behind the mythical “25-35%” idea. you will also see more modern research that paints a general picture showing academic integrity is more a systemic issue than an individual moral failing, which seems to be scholarly consensus at this point although I won’t make that claim outright because it isn’t my field. i admire you wanting to seek out sources and verify information, sorry if i wasn’t helpful enough in the immediate now! i will either edit this comment or make a new one so you get the ping once i find specific sources to share to help your research. for now, i hope the ERIC query i provided is a good enough jumping off point.

the problem with your response isn’t that you used AI, it’s that you attempt to use it in place of your own agency and intellectual ability instead of as a supplement to it.

correct me if i’m wrong but it seems like the idea here is that you want me to point out how clearly piss-poor your response is and then flip it back on me to say “HA you’re a HYPOCRITE!! SEE! AI IS BAAAaaaaAAaDDDdD!!!”

students in the 2000s copying and pasting things mindlessly into Google and thoughtlessly regurgitating strings they find online were engaging in genuine academically dishonest behavior. that isn’t because search engines are bad though, plenty of people used Google honestly, and I think anyone with a fucking brain can see that. so, why then, do people wanna make the same stupid-ass argument when it comes to AI? are you so fucking swept up in the zeitgeist as to not see your own hypocrisy?

like I said, all straw and no fucking man is what you people are.

and, if I am misreading your intentions here, which is assuredly possible… then I refer back to my initial statement in this reply.

yeah, and that should horrify you: because Western anti-AI hysteria is deeply rooted in a fascist cultural obsession with “ownership” of thoughts and ideas.

who the fuck cares if you used an AI tool to do work?

a decently designed course in academia won’t be something you can just “cheat” on. there’s this implication that the behavior is somehow the responsibility of the student body, so much so they should be punished for it; when there is no accountability for the professors and educators who actually design a shit-ass curriculum that makes students engage in these behaviors rather than actually learning. students are the victims here, not academia. academic dishonesty policies assume there is some massive contingent of students trying to “cheat the system” at all times and thus we must rabidly defend academia from it, as if she is some virgin maid. that isn’t true. the vast majority of students do not cheat. self-reported rates of cheating remain at a constant 25-35% of the student body over large periods of time. why? because it’s a myth. there aren’t large numbers of people trying to “defraud” academia. sure, it happens, but is it enough to justify the many more lives that are ruined by frivolous accusations?

i would cite case studies but literally it is so fucking common just google search and take your pick for whatever story tickles your exact rhetorical mindset.

and no, i’m not some “cheater” myself trying to defend academic dishonesty. i’ve played by the rules my entire academic career and im not gonna sit and be strawmanned bc i happen to notice the absolutely fucking egregious grifts and power imbalances that compose the modern academy. these people will charge you hundreds of thousands of dollars and then treat you worse than a fucking minimum wage mcdonald’s employee might treat the customers. it’s absolutely fucked in every way, they are enemies to education and human knowledge. education is important, knowledge should be FREE for everyone no matter what!

you should be pissed that these people masquerade as intellectuals when they’re nothing more than cowards trying to steal opportunity from the youth. it is not the place of the teacher to be the arbiter of discipline, that is the most heinous misreading of pedagogical principles and the fact that it has been allowed to go on for so long is a large part of why we sit here at the precipice of a new mass genocide, with thousands of ignorant fools clamoring it on or being willfully blind to it happening.

actually in theory yes any catholic can be pope.

in practice, however…

you work in technology, presumably. so you’re supposedly an engineer of sorts.

what kind of engineer says obviously wrong statements based on their feelings?

i’m willing to provide different sources and discussion if you object to that one for some reason but virtually all facets of research agree current artificial intelligence performance is nothing like what you are suggesting. what you’re claiming just isn’t true and you are spreading misinformation. it’s okay to be scared but it’s not okay to lie.

no. my point is that the world we live in now is the one you are describing. if rich people are the only ones able to afford litigation to support their copyright, then it might as well only exist for them. they do own everything, with the way things currently work.

the solution is, yes, crazily enough not attaching an arbitrary monetary value to information that is fundamentally free to produce and distribute.

you’re brainwashed, man.

this is always how people respond to anti-IP sentiment. i’m actually glad OP was specific enough to not just say copyright and expand his condemnation to IP generally. i agree with the OP that IP is such a brazen violation of nature as to be sinful, and im not really religious.

in what world does your strawman argument here exist? bc it certainly isn’t this one. don’t believe their noble lies that IP and copyright legislation is somehow good for artists. people now, with copyright, are literally “steamrolled” just the same way you suggest in your hypothetical. all those people making fan art and media through no small commitment of their time are forced into a black market because it is literally illegal to draw and sell mickey mouse. but i suppose that isn’t “real” art and doesn’t “deserve” to be protected by the law the same way? dude get your head out of your ass. do you not see how illogical the entire premise is? this is an assault on you and your peers. it’s quite literally fascist at best. and no this isn’t some woke fucking rambling. this is a real tool of oppression used against us that is so well-honed people like yourself beg for the boot.

everything you said here is absolutely correct and i’m glad at least some people recognize this issue. perhaps my use of the word rational in quotes was unfounded, i should’ve chosen better/more correct diction.

i suppose my point of “these people are just as rational as anyone else” is a bit of a misnomer and not exactly what i should’ve said; to clarify i probably more aptly meant “everyone, on average, has available to them the same basic cognitive faculties and it is a myth that the difference between these populations has something inherent to do with them as people,” which reading your reply you seem to agree with. i think this is key to fighting this, recognizing that on a grand scale it is in the course of life that these problems emerge vs the exact circumstances of birth. there’s definitely an argument about free will/determinism hidden here and you’d be valid to question how the circumstances of one’s birth relate to the course of your life (obviously, there is a strong relationship), but i digress. the important part is recognizing where these people “diverge” from what we would call “normal” is during life, not at the immediate beginning necessarily.

i like the example of literacy because it helps highlight the point i’m trying to make a little better, i think. most people adept in historiography and history would likely agree that there is a persistent myth that people in the past are somehow intellectually lesser than modern people. this of course isn’t true, but it’s difficult to explain why. to the layman it seems obvious that those in the past could do less than we can, but to the trained eye you can see that people have always been around the same level of average intelligence on a timescale comprehensible to human beings. improvements in average intelligence of the species are a very gradual evolutionary process that we can’t really perceive within the scale of human history; what has actually changed overtime is the sum of human knowledge. thus, people in hunter-gatherer societies were not “less intelligent” than their modern counterparts, they just used their intelligence differently. this is the crux of my argument. the literacy rate in prehistory, was… well, zero; as reading and writing had not been invented yet. but we don’t claim these people are less intelligent, for reasons described. literacy is intimately related to the problem at hand, but it is a symptom rather than a cause. i think we should extend that same logic to modern illiterates. they’re not necessarily lesser. taming the scourge of anti-intellectualism will hinge on truly understanding and recognizing that fact, which is something scientific outreach has done a poor job of imo. that has to do with the natural human inability to do true introspection along with the difficulty of the skill of empathy: problems that crop up in many facets of this debate.

although, as you describe, this is an active attack on us in what can only be described as a class war. modern LLMs and GPTs are another great case study. “intelligent” people are able to use these tools as nootropics and offload even more of their cognitive workload to the computer than ever before. it seems like most, however, aren’t capable of using them this way, as you point out. i think it speaks to the nature of intelligence enhancement tools generally. those who are capable can achieve greater things than they could alone. most, however, will see the opportunity to do less cognitive work as just that, a way to have to think less; and they then fail to properly utilize the tools in a way that is adverse to their own intellectual ability. interesting diactem, i think. speaks to the core of the problem.

i’m not so sure this is a problem we can even solve. there’s an episode of futurama where they travel to the distant future and all of humanity has diverged into two separate species of dumb, orcish brutes and frail, hyper-intellectual imps. maybe this truly is the path we are on, maybe the forces driving this divergence are too strong to be reconciled.

any thanks for listening to me ramble

while i don’t ardently agree with all your rhetoric it makes me feel such a sense of solace to see some of these ideas expressed in the wild.

it’s absolutely confounding how even seemingly rational people begin to emotionally seethe when presented with the fact that shitposting and generally bullying people isn’t activism. seems to be a very human thing.

i think a big part of the issue generally is that people think of their intelligence as some sort of absolute and continuous character trait rather than a discrete aspect of your personality; i.e, the idea someone is a “stupid” or “intelligent” person is of itself, a stupid idea lol. sometimes you’re the biggest brain in the room, sometimes you’re an idiot.

i appreciate your focus on the emotional aspect of it because that is certainly the more pertinent part. imo all humans average around the same intellectual capability, sans extreme outliers. it’s more about how people choose to use what is available to them than an actual lacking of mental capabilities. these people are just as rational as anyone else, it just happens that the vast landscape of knowledge itself is full of many pangs and holes that lead to nowhere; they seem stupid because there exists a seemingly logical perspective that causes them to infinitesimally and continually spin around these holes, like a coin in a make-a-wish donation thing. not sure if i’m conveying my rationale very well but i have found that the stuff in the cracks between ideas like this is often where the calculus of the universe hides in life.

it’s not bad luck. saying that is disingenuous.

homelessness of the societal nature and scale that is present in america rn is not the historical norm. it is absolutely despicable how western culture encourages extremist individualism to such a degree as to destroy communities. even today, in the fucking present, people not from the west often think it’s bonkers how callous and unfeeling the west is. it is not some sort of natural condition for society to hatefully cast aside its most vulnerable individuals to the wolves.

the oklahoma state government encouraged on their tourism board website a halloween themed “roadtrip” through all the “sp0oooOky OK ghost towns”… my friends and i saw it that year in high school and decided to go. do you know what we saw in these abandoned towns? a whole separate shadow society. there are millions, yes zero hyperbole, millions of unaccounted for people just here in america alone; having to build a community off the disgusting scraps of industrial civilization. millions of people not included in any sort of statistic or thought about by you or i. they’re forgotten in the most despicably sinful act against the sanctity of life itself. if there is a god, i can only hope he punishes the transgressions of our society that allowed this to come to term, normalized it even.

wake tf up. this is an attack on you, your friends, and your family. this is class warfare and these people are on the front lines. homelessness is a civil dunkirk. the images of the brother dying to overdose alone in the wilderness on the cold hard ground, the mother suffering the birth of her bastard of rape in the arms of only the cold & dark unfeeling city, the father attempting to slash his throat and leaking into a pathetic puddle of pitiful death on the alley floor, the sister wandering the wilds as her body gradually decays in spite of her divine spark of soulful life - these all should inspire a sense of community and pride that are ruthlessly held up by a white-hot rage against the machine. these people are not others. they are you. the beast prefers you not recognize yourself as its prey.

i’d consider myself an atheist. maybe a pantheist at most. but to so brazenly violate the tenet of love thy neighbor will be our greatest downfall. as the walls of modern society crumble down to the ebb of time people will not recognize their mistakes. people will run around, like headless chickens, in fear of consequences that have already came. if it is possible that some cosmic force will relent and save us some which way, i can only pray.

no, i definitely do.

copyright is the opposite of freedom of speech. any other interpretation is just bending the truth. what is copyright other than putting a monetary value on data and information as if it were a commodity that can be bought, sold, and owned?

how the fuck is that not directly antithetical to freedom of information? freedom of speech and freedom of information are the same ideas, or at least any true proponent of free speech is a proponent of freedom of information. ig except dense fucking westoids who can’t seem to grasp basic logical concepts.

no, i just think i don’t like dealing with idiots like yourself who’s perogotive is to abscond anything you read that makes you feel any cognitive dissonance.

i have nothing good to say to those who can’t engage in good-faith discussion, like yourself. you’re part of the problem with the world nowadays.

um yes? because it’s the truth? do some research before posting man. even if you were alive back then that doesn’t mean you knew wtf was up everywhere in the country with every demographic.

apologies for reddit as a source but full time wage in 1974 for mcdonald’s was, coupled with aid like the GI program, absolutely more than enough capital to buy a family home. don’t spread misinformation. remember what was stolen, or for some never even given.

i hate how brainwashed westerners are. will go on a diatribe about the importance of free speech and then rabidly defend copyright as if it isn’t directly contrary to the idea of freedom of information, all in the same breath.

inb4 that’s a description of every reply to this comment.

i mean, i don’t disagree with anything you’ve said except the rhetoric that it is an unchangeable constant.

sure, this is all true. beating the idea that it’s an inescapable reality into american’s heads online sure isn’t going to help change it tho. these people are still people, just like you.

that’s fair, my absolute statement doesn’t reflect the exclusive way anti fraud laws are written. you certainly might find and successfully exploit legal ways to lie for financial gain, but at best it’s unethical and at worst you’ll have to defend why your deceit isn’t criminal fraud in a lawsuit. it kind of depends on who you piss off the most, imo.

uh, yes? it’s at the least fraud fs? the article says the doj is charging mike smith with three money laundering charges and one count of wire fraud. obviously the wire fraud charge comes from an argument that smith defrauded the distribution companies into illegitimately paying out royalties for false streams. note that the artificial intelligence solution only comes into the argument for the purposes of how he committed the crime, it really had nothing to do with the crime itself, at least intrinsically. if you read the press release from the doj, you can see that they make a pretty airtight argument that, quote:

SMITH made numerous misrepresentations to the Streaming Platforms in furtherance of the fraud scheme. For example, SMITH repeatedly lied to the Streaming Platforms when he used false names and other information to create the Bot Accounts and when he agreed to abide by terms and conditions that prohibited streaming manipulation. SMITH also deceived the Streaming Platforms by making it appear as if legitimate users were in control of the Bot Accounts and streaming music when, in fact, the Bot Accounts were hard coded to stream SMITH’s music billions of times. SMITH also caused the Streaming Platforms to falsely report billions of streams of his music, even though SMITH knew that those streams were in fact caused by the Bot Accounts rather than real human listeners.

SMITH’s hundreds of thousands of AI-generated songs were streamed by his Bot Accounts billions of times, which allowed him to fraudulently obtain more than $10 million in royalties.

it is not illegal to lie. it is absolutely illegal to lie for the purposes of financial gain. sure, i’m not disagreeing that what he did could not somehow be construed as something of a robin hood character arc (even tho he most certainly did this for the purposes of his own personal enrichment). but he almost definitely is guilty of the wire fraud charge and i do have a strong feeling, based on the prosecutorial level of this case, the involvement of a specialized division of the fbi, and his purported co-conspirators; that the money laundering charges are ironclad as well. frankly, i’m hoping his co-conspirators actually do end up going to trial and we get to learn what the company that aided in his fraud actually was. on fucking god it’d be one thing if he ran this grift machine for a little while, paid off a lil bit of his debts and all, maybe even lived off of it. but to steal $10 million fucking dollars with it, even when he knew he was committing fraud and had to explicitly hide his criminal activity??? no shit the fbi was hot on your trail. what an absolutely, colossal dipshit michael smith must be. i respect the ingenuity but it is so blindingly obvious that 10 million dollars was egregiously too many times to press a “free money button” you just invented in a capitalist autocratic hellscape.

QUICK EDIT: i do just wanna say also i did not downvote u/shani66 and i just wanted to contribute to discussion. just noticed after i posted someone had downvoted them which is kinda goofy of whoever that is.