A Student's Guide to Writing with ChatGPT

I actually think that this is the most important part of the article:

> Similarly, it’s important to be open about how you use ChatGPT. The simplest way to do this is to generate shareable links and include them in your bibliography . By proactively giving your professors a way to audit your use of AI, you signal your commitment to academic integrity and demonstrate that you’re using it not as a shortcut to avoid doing the work, but as a tool to support your learning.

Would it be a viable solution for teachers to ask everyone to do this? Like a mandatory part of the homework? And grade it? Just a random thought...

As an Information Tech Instructor I have my students use ChatGPT all the time - but it never occurred to me to make them share the link. Will do it now.

I’ve seen a lot of places that require students to reference their ChatGPT use — and I think it is wrong headed. Because it is not a source to cite!

But, sharing links for helping teachers understand your prompting is great

> Would it be a viable solution for teachers to ask everyone to do this? Like a mandatory part of the homework? And grade it? Just a random thought...

To ask everyone to use ChatGPT, or to ask everyone to document their use of ChatGPT? I don't think the former is reasonable unless it's specifically the point of the class, and I believe that the latter is already done (by requirements to cite sources), though, as often happens, rapid technological developments mean that people don't think of ChatGPT as a source that they are required to cite like any other.

> I’ve seen a lot of places that require students to reference their ChatGPT use — and I think it is wrong headed. Because it is not a source to cite!

Why is it not a source? I think that it is not if "source" means "repository of truth," but I don't think that's the only valid meaning of "source."

For example, if I were reporting on propaganda, then I think that I could cite actual propaganda as a source, even though it is not a repository of truth. Now maybe that doesn't count because the propaganda is serving as a true record of untrue statements, but couldn't I also cite a source for a fictional story, that is untrue but that I used as inspiration? In the same way, it seems to me that I could cite ChatGPT as a source that helped me to shape and formulate my thoughts, even if it did not tell me any facts, or at least if I independently checked the 'facts' that it asserted.

That's "the devil's I," by the way; I am long past writing school essays. Although, of course, proper attribution is appropriate long past school days, and, indeed, as an academic researcher, I do try my best to attribute people who helped me to come up with an idea, even if the idea itself is nominally mine.

Because otherwise it becomes convoluted. It is acceptable to cite and source published material. Having to account for the source of one’s ideas, however, citing friends and influences - it shouldn’t be a moral requirement, just imagine!

> Because otherwise it becomes convoluted. It is acceptable to cite and source published material. Having to account for the source of one’s ideas, however, citing friends and influences - it shouldn’t be a moral requirement, just imagine!

But there is, I think, a big gap between "it is not a source to cite" from your original post, and "it shouldn't be a moral requirement" in this one. I think that, while not every utterance should be annotated with references to every person or resource that contributed to it, there is a lot of room particularly in academic discourse for acknowledging informal contributions just as much as formal ones.

I don't like the idea of requiring it in school. It is tantamount to the government (of which school is a manifestation) forcing you (a minor) to enter into a rather unfavorable contract (data collection? arbitration? prove you are a human?) with "Open"AI. This type of thing is already too normalized.

The point of citing sources is so that the reader can retrace the evidential basis on which the writer's claims rest. A citation to "Chat GPT" doesn't help with this at all. Saying "Chat GPT helped me write this" is more like an acknowledgment than a citation.

It's as much of a source as (personal communication) is, and that's also a requirement if you just went and asked an expert.

Again, it is standard practice to cite things like (personal communication) or (Person, unpublished) to document where a fact is coming from, even if it cannot be retraced (which also comes up when publishing talks whose recordings or transcripts are not available).

or submit a screen recording of their writing process.

seems hard to fake that. and you could randomly quiz them on it .

This is my point and better stated. I always acknowledge ChatGPT in my writing and never cite it.

> I always acknowledge ChatGPT in my writing and never cite it.

These are not the uses with which I am familiar—as Fomite says in a sibling comment, I am used to referring to citing personal communications; but, if you are using "cite" to mean only "produce as a reproducible testament to truth," and "source" only as "something that reproducibly demonstrates truth," which is a distinction whose value I can acknowledge making even if it's not the one I am used to, then your argument makes more sense to me.