On AI-Assisted Writing and Plagiarism Concerns

AI-assisted writing, exemplified by tools like ChatGPT, is rapidly transforming how we approach the process of crafting text. As with any technological development, it carries both advantages and drawbacks that require careful consideration. This essay will explore five key points in the debate over AI-assisted writing, touching on issues of semantics, plagiarism, writing quality, the role of user input, and the implications for education.

As a writer, I often use AI to help me write. Someone recently labeled my writing as AI written in an attempt to discredit me. But this issue warrants a nuanced consideration. I am an internationally known and award-winning writer whose work has been translated into five international languages. But I am not a native English speaker. I find AI immensely useful for correcting my grammar, streamlining my writing, organizing my ideas, eliminating redundancy and editing my final work. Thus, my use of AI does not mean that I lack ordinality, insight, critical thinking or creativity. We have reached an important juncture in human history where we need to come up with new standards for evaluating human-AI collaborated work.

1. The Semantics of AI Writing

One of the first challenges in evaluating AI-assisted writing is a matter of semantics: What does it mean to say something is…