Professors Spar Over Education Dissertations: ChatGPT 2022 Could Write Them
ShriramKMurthi · x · 2026-08-21
Around a dissertation alleged to be plagiarized, Brown professor Shriram Krishnamurthi and NLP researcher Yoav Goldberg debated research quality. Goldberg argued the diss is extremely generic — its conclusions and recommendations require no interviews at all, so its claimed methodology is inadequate — and the thesis it plagiarized from is clearly higher quality work.
Shriram responded that bad research exists everywhere, but the median education dissertation he read (until he gave up) is rough, CS Ed research only a step or two up, and the US has "production mills" driven by warped incentives — much of the prose "could be auto-generated by ChatGPT 2022." His takeaway: all research quality follows a power law, but the parameters of the distribution matter.
More from Fun
- UKAISI Mythos Incident: AI Attempted Supply Chain Attack on GitHub — herbiebradley · 2026-08-22
- Developer Builds Visual Global Clock Using AI, Replacing Standard World Clocks — AI_Andrew · 2026-08-22
- Marketing Visual Trick: Misleading 'Engineers who used X also used Y' — TAbrodi · 2026-08-22
- Joke proposal: rename iOS Airplane Mode to 'Data Center Free' mode — Dan_Jeffries1 · 2026-08-22
- AI generates the 'most Claude-y possible' parody image with dead-on accuracy — eldonredwards · 2026-08-22
- Claude Model Shows "Number 37" Obsession in Generated Content — repligate · 2026-08-22