Is this article plagiarism? Now you can find out.

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ISSUE 21.36 • 2024-09-02 PUBLIC DEFENDER By Brian Livingston An epidemic of plagiarism — outright duplication of other people’s works — is raging thro
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ibe98765, MHCLV941, rc primak, windbg, Alex5723, Mr. Austin, jburk07, Norio, Casey S, fisher75, SueW, abbodi86, rizzquery, DLivesInTexas, lmacri

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Informative article!
I thought that plagiarism involved simple Copy and Paste.  I conducted an internet search about “plagiarism detection’ to read the ever-so-typical “5-Best,” “10-Best” software articles from sources often unheard-of before.  (I like that Ask Woody presents trustworthy authors.)
After reading the Wikipedia article, I learned about several types of plagiarism, from least to most “Degree of obfuscation/Difficulty of detection:”

• Copy and Paste
• Disguised
• Paraphrase
• Translation
• Idea

I also learned that the degree of plagiarism is subjective.

Since 1972 I had thought I coined the phrase, “Education is expensive, but ignorance costs more.”  ChatGPT says the quote is most attributed to Ann Landers, but can’t say when she first said it, and that many authors and speakers shared the same message essence.

In other words, “plagiarism is complicated” beyond simple Cut and Paste.

Thank you for the article!

Moderator Edit: to remove HTML from copy/paste.

 

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“Education is expensive, but ignorance costs more.”

I am unable to find an original source for this quote in a Google Search. Are you sure the AI you consulted didn’t just make up the Ann Landers attribution?

-- rc primak

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The statement “Education is expensive, but ignorance costs more” was used below in 1957.

The Scout, formerly known as The Tech, is Bradley University’s student newspaper. This volume includes publications from September 20, 1957 through May 29, 1958.

https://archive.org/stream/scout19571958/Scout%201957-1958_djvu.txt

ALSO:

Benjamin Franklin is similarly quoted as saying, “The only thing more expensive than education is ignorance” and I’m confident that Franklin probably sourced the quote from some prior historical reference.

Nothing is ever really new.

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Did you generate any estimate of possible false positives? We have noticed that TurnItIn gave very high probabilities for AI generation when other scanners didn’t and wondered if its algorithm might lean toward the false positive side of things. In challenging student work, that’s not an minor consideration.

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MHCLV941

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Update on TurnItIn false positives for AI–we were seeing 100% ratings on some papers earlier in the summer, but looking at the same papers now, the ones we thought likely weren’t AI-generated now get scores like 15% probability, so they apparently have adjusted their algorithms for better discrimination. Maybe they sense an AI business use if they get it right.

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TurnItIn false positives for AI
Guidance on AI Detection and Why We’re Disabling Turnitin’s AI Detector
Vanderbitl University, 2023
https://www.vanderbilt.edu/brightspace/2023/08/16/guidance-on-ai-detection-and-why-were-disabling-turnitins-ai-detector/

Vanderbilt is by far not the only higher education institution which has come under fire for false-positives in using AI to detect AI content in student and thesis writing. The false-positives rates have declined sharply in recent years, but claims of 100% or even above-90-percent accuracy are to put it mildly, hogwash.

-- rc primak

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I certainly agree with your desire for original material, not material that is repeated from other sites and it is good to have apps that will detect plagiarism.  Plagiarism is not only stealing content, but gives the impression that more people have achieved similar conclusions; helping to popularize info that is often wrong.

Plagiarism has been an issue for at least 100 years. I have read books from 1920’s that had complaints about authors that published works that were copying the work of others (ie plagiarized) .

From early days of internet I was finding articles that were strangely similar  (even word for word the same) to other articles that came up in search, but showing a different author.

AI wasn’t needed. Makes it easier.

 

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ibe98765

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But how close a similarity constitutes actual copying?

We probably all remember the emotional trial of George Harrison post-Beatles when he got sued (successfully) over his recording of the song, “My Sweet Lord”. It was not the Shirelles (“He’s So Fine”) who sued, but their then-studio backing guitarist, Charlie Rich, who spearheaded that lawsuit. Then there’s the question, recently resolved over whether the intro to Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” was in fact ripped off from their touring companion,  Randy California (“Taurus”). Randy California never complained about the alleged ripoff, and never called it plagiarism.

AI would probably have labeled both of those song pairings plagiarism. Just saying…

-- rc primak

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Why did you change your typical Subject: line in this newsletter? You dropped the leading AskWoody Plus , which at least for us impacts email filtering and spam handling. I had to retrieve the newsletter out of spam.

Today
Issue 21.36.0 – 2024-09-02 – Is this article plagiarism? Now you can find out.

All previous formats would have been
AskWoody Plus 21.36.0 – 2024-09-02 – Is this article plagiarism? Now you can find out.

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JohnReam wrote:

Why did you change your typical Subject: line

Typo on my part. I’m conscious of the desire for a consistent subject line. I apologize for the error.

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SueW, rc primak

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AI related :Cheapfakes and deepfakes — How to spot them

In recent weeks, the term ‘cheapfake’ has shot to the forefront of our national consciousness. Cheapfakes — and their equally disruptive counterpart, deepfakes — are becoming much more prevalent today, with the volume of this misleading content estimated to be doubling online every six months. ..

Cheapfakes are media that have been manipulated through inexpensive, more accessible means like commercial photo and video editing software. Many cheapfakes are created with tools like Adobe, which enables the speeding up and slowing down of video, as well as the creation of animation, movement and face swapping…

Deepfakes, on the other hand, are more realistic than cheapfakes and much harder to detect. They require a much higher level of training, competency and sophisticated tools to create…

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They require a much higher level of training, competency and sophisticated tools to create…

For now…

-- rc primak

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Alex5723

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You should take a gander at this, an AI generated tech newscast. The people are avatars and their movements/speaking are all generated by AI!

Israel’s semiconductor sector has a boost – and which Iranian-born Israeli invested in a company?
CTech by Calcalist
September 9, 2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLu7SLS40Cc

 

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Interesting topic but of the 5 listed, I found they were all comeons ads for paid versions. Does anyone know of truly free plagiarism checkers?

Quetext used to be free for limited use but no more.

• Plagscan
• Plagiarism Checker (by Small SEO Tools)
• Quetext
• Plagiarism Checker (by Search Engine Reports)
• Unicheck

 

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Given the serious quantity of data and analysis required, I would expect a PC app to be paid, not free. For occasional use I’d put up with the ads.

cheers, Paul

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Paul T wrote:

Given the serious quantity of data and analysis required, I would expect a PC app to be paid, not free.

That gave me an idea, which hopefully the creators of MS Office, OpenOffice and LibreOffice are trying to carry out as we speak.

I’d be willing to pay extra for the ability to install (as an add-on of some kind) a plagiarism checker of my choosing from a list of choices presented to me during installation of the word processor of those office suites.

However, since things still seem to be in their late stages of infancy in this anti-plagiarism checker arena (as shown by posts above), perhaps the ability to uninstall the item initially chosen would also be a good idea in case the one initially chosen proves to be problem-laden with false positives or false negatives later in its life.

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When it comes to claimed original research or artistic creation, plagiarism is important.

However, it should be clear to mst that the majority of what you find on the net as “news” is really just single articles taken from a source such as AP/Reuters/CNN/, etc. reworded (usually) and reposted with a new byline.

This is particularly true when it comes to sports/entertainment “news”.

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