When it comes to permissible uses of AI in professional writing, one philosopher argues that “anything that is acceptable to ask a human to do is, other things equal, acceptable for an LLM to do. (Equivalently, anything it would be wrong to ask a human to do is wrong to ask an LLM to do.)”
The principle rules out, van Oosterum says, having an LLM write an article for you and you failing to acknowledge that. Writers are generally not morally permitted to “take credit for someone else’s work,” and that goes not just when the someone else is a someone but also when it is a something . But the principle doesn’t prohibit, he says, using an AI to “transcribe interviews, generate pushback on my… thesis, suggest trims when I’m over my word count, sharpen podcast interview questions, and perform a final fact check on columns and editorials.”
The Simple Principle would, therefore, permit [a writer] to use an LLM to complete the very same tasks which are ‘ancillary’ to the main job. This point is crucial. The principle is compatible with the obviously-true idea that an author retains ultimate responsibility; just as one cannot blame a human assistant for a published error, the author remains the agent responsible for the final output.
Is van Oosterum’s principle a good one? The idea is to piggyback on the existing norms we have regarding authorship and assistance.
Source: Daily Nous (philosophy news) — Read the full article on the original site ↗