Discussion summary
A discussion emerged around restrictions on prompting ChatGPT during a chalk talk, with some viewing it as discrimination and others seeing it as a matter of fairness or satire. Participants debated the role of AI as a search tool versus a source of understanding, and the implications for human knowledge and originality.
What the discussion says
- Some see restrictions as unfair discrimination.
- Others compare AI to search tools or note it's satire.
- Debate over whether AI use is akin to plagiarism.
- Discussion about the value of human understanding.
- Concerns about delegating understanding to AI.
“Calling it 'Discrimination' is obviously absurd but if the process produces useful results, consider switching.”
“AI is like search but with a simulation of understanding and information synthesis far faster.”
Comments
Hacker News
So it is funny satire.
But my wife is finishing up her PHd and according to her: all students are using ai and pretending they are not because the PI and other older leadership treat any use of ChatGPT or similar as plagiarism and not allowed at any stage. Which I think is simply stupid.
I showed her how to use ChatGPT since Claude was blocking on all her request (biologist) and it has helped her massively improve the wording and structure of her paper as English is not a first language for her.
This is about software developers.
by xelxebar
I see this text as more open ended than a warning. It's a description of a possible future for us to contemplate. Does it have good points does it have bad points? Being satire, the protagonist is a strawman of course, but doesn't she also have some good points? It's not easy to tell where exactly the author stands where, the true argument stops and the satire begins. That's not necessarily a flaw because it doesn't actually really matter where the author stands for our ability to discuss the subject.
Scientist as prompter? Yes it seems fairly likely. But to what extent and how quickly will it happen? Surely scientists will still be able to at least give an outline of "their" work even in the future? Maybe?
Otherwise maybe we it will be a sort of inversion of control, where the language model is the supervisor, and the humans in the loop are more like research assistants doing the dirty work? Instead of a human wearing an exoskeleton, an AI wearing a biological exoskeleton? But this can only be a temporary state of affairs as we won't be needed for that forever.
A scientific project without human involvement? If a paper is published in a journal and no human wrote it and no human read it, is it really science? Does it really advance knowledge. Probably?
by im3w1l
One of the better-written ones I've seen. Am sending it around to some professors.
by neilv
Do note that this was written in December 2025, and we have experienced leaps in capabilities since then. Her methods are outdated. Since January, I've been employed at 3 jobs, fulltime, by using ProxyAI [0]. I'm Chair in several universities. For all I know, I'm also part of several projects.
Don't let this kind of blatant discrimination affect you. The future is bright.
Note: the service is free once you give it access to your bank account.
Edit: downvote from the haters, it's ok this account is managed by my proxy.
by firefoxd
This is satire.
A funny piece, but what if all of the following are true:
- AI *is* how real research is done
- Incentives are such that this is how researchers must work
- Academia institution does not have a structure to accept this reality
Maybe we should take away the grants from the universities and put them into autoresearch loops + human reviewers?
by avaer
It’s a joke and all but also not really? You might have to go do a chalk talk at some point, and that is basically the only part of this article that is actually not real. The rest (about how everyone in academia is prompting everything) is absolutely VERY real.
The word around all the scientific communities which I’m in contact with (to be honest, not so many) is basically “oh, there is no way to stop it, so we’ll embrace it”. All the conferences which I’m active in (say a handful of them) are just pretending nothing is happening and dealing only with blatant and obvious exaggerated cases. If you’re good at prompting, you’ll prompt, and there is no way in hell someone that doesn’t prompt has any chance at all at, well, anything academic really.
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- Hacker News
- So it is funny satire.
But my wife is finishing up her PHd and according to her: all students are using ai and pretending they are not because the PI and other older leadership treat any use of ChatGPT or similar as plagiarism and not allowed at any stage. Which I think is simply stupid.
I showed her how to use ChatGPT since Claude was blocking on all her request (biologist) and it has helped her massively improve the wording and structure of her paper as English is not a first language for her.
- This is about software developers.by xelxebar
- I see this text as more open ended than a warning. It's a description of a possible future for us to contemplate. Does it have good points does it have bad points? Being satire, the protagonist is a strawman of course, but doesn't she also have some good points? It's not easy to tell where exactly the author stands where, the true argument stops and the satire begins. That's not necessarily a flaw because it doesn't actually really matter where the author stands for our ability to discuss the subject.
Scientist as prompter? Yes it seems fairly likely. But to what extent and how quickly will it happen? Surely scientists will still be able to at least give an outline of "their" work even in the future? Maybe?
Otherwise maybe we it will be a sort of inversion of control, where the language model is the supervisor, and the humans in the loop are more like research assistants doing the dirty work? Instead of a human wearing an exoskeleton, an AI wearing a biological exoskeleton? But this can only be a temporary state of affairs as we won't be needed for that forever.
A scientific project without human involvement? If a paper is published in a journal and no human wrote it and no human read it, is it really science? Does it really advance knowledge. Probably?
by im3w1l - One of the better-written ones I've seen. Am sending it around to some professors.by neilv
- Do note that this was written in December 2025, and we have experienced leaps in capabilities since then. Her methods are outdated. Since January, I've been employed at 3 jobs, fulltime, by using ProxyAI [0]. I'm Chair in several universities. For all I know, I'm also part of several projects.
Don't let this kind of blatant discrimination affect you. The future is bright.
Note: the service is free once you give it access to your bank account.
Edit: downvote from the haters, it's ok this account is managed by my proxy.
by firefoxd - This is satire.
- A funny piece, but what if all of the following are true:
Academia did this to itself. By hiring based on volume of output/citations, the way for researchers to win is to game the system better than the next person. AI just exposes that the old power structure doesn't serve much academic purpose.- AI *is* how real research is done - Incentives are such that this is how researchers must work - Academia institution does not have a structure to accept this realityMaybe we should take away the grants from the universities and put them into autoresearch loops + human reviewers?
by avaer - It’s a joke and all but also not really? You might have to go do a chalk talk at some point, and that is basically the only part of this article that is actually not real. The rest (about how everyone in academia is prompting everything) is absolutely VERY real.
The word around all the scientific communities which I’m in contact with (to be honest, not so many) is basically “oh, there is no way to stop it, so we’ll embrace it”. All the conferences which I’m active in (say a handful of them) are just pretending nothing is happening and dealing only with blatant and obvious exaggerated cases. If you’re good at prompting, you’ll prompt, and there is no way in hell someone that doesn’t prompt has any chance at all at, well, anything academic really.