I Wasn't Allowed Prompting ChatGPT During My Chalk Talk: This Is Discrimination (2025)

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• Hacker News
• But honestly, I think it makes sense. In my experience with programming, when it comes to building and delivering software, it's not really about memorization. Honestly, search ability has been far more important. Wouldn't it be fair to think of AI as just another search ability?

  What I'm curious about is this: in the end, experts are the ones who are best at distinguishing hallucinations. If you can just search with GPT and tell the difference, wouldn't that be enough? I can't imagine memorizing thousands or tens of thousands of lines.

  I have ADHD, and when I get nervous, I tend to forget what I was going to say, so it's even more true for me.

  by jdw64
• You can bring notes to a chalk talk.
  by bryanlarsen
• > Wouldn't it be fair to think of AI as just another search ability?

  If you're asking it questions, yes. It's like search but with a simulation of understanding and information synthesis far faster than a human can perform it.

  If you're having it write your code, no. It's like a junior developer who has no awareness of the bigger picture, of incompatibilities, of understanding that hasn't been contained and can't be derived from the codebase.

  > If you can just search with GPT and tell the difference, wouldn't that be enough?

  The situation the satire is describing is an individual who is unable to tell the difference. The way the scenario is laid out, everything she's 'accomplished' has been to prompt ChatGPT and publish its answers with some degree of editing; it's clear that she, as an individual, is not an expert, does not understand the thing she is presenting, and does not know any of what she has purported to know. This is also a sadly common refrain these days.

  > I can't imagine memorizing thousands or tens of thousands of lines.

  It's not about memorizing thousands of lines of text; it's about demonstrating to the panel that you have an understanding of the thing you're claiming to have an understanding of.

  I work with a lot of software and infrastructure at work. I can tell you how it all (or most of it) works together and interacts. I could not reproduce the configurations of any of the software from memory, nor recite any of the code, but I have an understanding of the system, how it works, what it was designed for, and what choices were made and why.

  The professor in this article does not have any of that understanding. It would be as if I had Claude deploy a cluster of X, Y, Z components, configure them, and get them online, and then put on my resume that I had done it. It was accomplished as result of me, but if I don't understand the system then there's no difference between me doing it and the CEO doing it, or my son, or someone from Taskrabbit.

  So yeah, it's not about memorization, it's about understanding.

  by danudey
• "prepared to do what I do every single day in my actual scientific practice: type a prompt and receive a coherent, well-structured response that I would then lightly edit and present as my own thinking."

  So, plagiarism. Daily.

  by topham
• What’s going on with social queues today where so many people here are not immediately understanding this is clearly satire?
  by talon8635
• But when humans do it suddenly it's "standing on the shoulders of giants"

  I don't get how you can possibly call it plagiarism if it produce a novel breakthrough - by definition, the existing knowledge base doesn't contain the new ideas generated in this process.

  And we've proven it can handle complex, novel thinking when it solved a significant Erdos problem back in May: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ai-just-solved-an...

  by handoflixue
• This is satire
  by TheJCDenton
• Calling it "Discrimination" is obviously absurd but if the process produces useful results, one ought to seriously consider whether it might be worth switching.

  I understand we have always conventionally transported goods by horse. Yes, this employee knows nothing about horses, and in fact is rather spooked by them, but we've checked! Their claim to be able to transport goods faster, without a horse, somehow seems to hold up.

  Maybe, just maybe, we should take this whole "truck" concept seriously?

  by handoflixue
• Found Rachel. Thinking and doing things with this archaic thing called “brain” is not a horse, and using LLM is not a truck.
  by wiseowise
• I don't think the argument is necessarily against the use of the tools entirely. My interpretation is that it's against delegating to them all understanding.

  Humans can only usefully steer LLMs if they have some understanding or context the LLMs do not.

  by ekelsen
• It's actually embarrassing that she thought all that prompting would have been acceptable during the talk.

  A qualifed researcher would have had their agent perform the talk on their behalf rather than waste everyone's time.

  by root_axis
• It's a joke.
  by tptacek
• << << My own words? I haven’t used my own words since 2022. I’m not even sure I have my own words anymore.

  I thought about you wrote and I think you are right. Even though I am partial to author's POV ( despite some obvious, glaring issues ), I can't help feeling of two minds about it all. I don't want to undermine existing ecosystem, but then.. the existing ecosystem in research may need some decent shake up.

  by iugtmkbdfil834
• I mean... this has to be satirical, right? Surely nobody in the field of academia is this limited in their ability....
  by SteinsGoat
• > this has to be satirical, right?

  Right.

  > Surely nobody in the field of academia is this limited in their ability....

  Wrong.

  by Cpoll
• Sounds like you should feed the article into ChatGPT to find out whether it is satire.
  by InsideOutSanta
• Strawman takes a hit AND IT GOES DOWN!!
  by casey2
• "The Evolution of Human Science"
  by mcc1ane
• Loved it!
  by vector_vibe
• academia will (hopefully) be an industry that benefits from, rather than degraded or obsoleted by, ai. the system should self-correct. scientists that use ai to give themselves more time to think will succeed and scientists that use ai to avoid thinking will fail. over the next few years processes and pedagogies should develop that help reliably guide researchers toward success.

  there's a lot of tedium in academia. ai taking menial tasks off the plates of grad students and post docs allows them to spend more time collaborating with, instead of serving, the head of the lab. dissertation defense is already a strong mitigation against producing folks like that satirical Dr. Simmons, you can't defend a dissertation if you don't have the chops for a chalk talk.

  by otekengineering
• Ah yes, and I wasn’t allowed a google search during my whiteboard interview, which was totally also discrimination.

  It is certainly not that case that the point of these exercises is to examine how you, as a person think and approach problems.

  by devmor
• She had me for the first 300 milliseconds. Very funny.
  by LennyHenrysNuts
• Reminds me of a sub plot from Accelerando. Wasn't a huge fan of the book but it left an impression.
  by whatsakandr
• I hope people understand that this is a satire. :-)
  by g42gregory
• > It is, in other words, a ritual designed in 1974 and never updated.

  The Chalk Talk was not invented after the IBM System/360. This entire article is clearly a joke.

  by krallja
• I would guess this is a tongue-in-cheek essay (I hope), but it’s probably kind of prescient.

  I’m old enough to remember when calculators were banned from classrooms, for almost the exact same reasons that people are giving against AI.

  It’s really only a matter of time.

  by ChrisMarshallNY
• I don't really follow this comparison. The protagonist was able to use an AI in the same ways they could use a calculator or most tools. You don't use them in the middle of delivering a presentation.
  by Dylan16807
• X were banned because you need to learn or demonstrate the ability to do Y.

  X = calculator, Y = addition and subtraction

  X = LLM, Y = thinking

  they are not the same

  by ShinyLeftPad
• Quite a clever way to take a jab at the cross-coast rival. Well done
  by mlacks
• 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.

  by troglodytetrain