Plagiarism in the age of AI

My first ever “blog post” (though not in this blog) was about how to write a research paper. I wrote it after reviewing a batch of badly-written papers for a conference, probably ITP or CADE. Later — a couple of years ago — came the campaign to oust Claudine Gay as President of Harvard on the grounds that she had committed plagiarism. Allegations of plagiarism were flying about on social media. Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, one of Gay’s main opponents, discovered that alleging plagiarism was a game that anyone could play. All of this happened shortly before the annual lecture I give at Cambridge based on that “how to write a paper” post. And it dawned on me that many of my complaints about the papers I was reviewing were really about plagiarism. It’s a tricky concept to pin down, which makes it especially convenient as a tool to ease out people who happen to be the wrong sex or colour. And now, with AI, it is automated. Plagiarism 101 Plagiarism is generally defined as…