Plagiarism

Avoiding plagiarism is an essential aspect of abiding by academic integrity, and the JKM Library is here to support you in making sure you cite and credit your sources properly for your papers and projects.  To assist you in this, the JKM Library provides access to the following resources.  If you are not sure which to use, or how to use them, please consult your professors and/or the JKM staff.

McCormick and LSTC each have their own interpretations of what constitutes academic integrity and plagiarism.  For more information, please consult your school's policies.

Finally, the websites below provide further information on academic plagiarism and how to avoid it.

 

Plagiarism and "AI"

There are many things to be said today about Large Language Model (LLM) "AI," also known as "generative AI," from an academic perspective.

This includes noting that, from the beginning, the companies selling this technology have made unauthorized and uncited use of the works on which they have trained their models, data their software also reproduces, which amounts to copyright violation and plagiarism on a grand scale.

However, the question of your use of such "AI" in your seminary degree program is a separate one.

When it comes to LLM "AI" as a source of text, you should treat its output like any other source of text you did not in fact write.

No matter how much work you put into "prompt engineering," you did not write the "AI" output text, and you are not responsible for what it says. But you are responsible for how you use it.

If you receive LLM "AI" output text, and present that text as your own, you are engaging in plagiarism as a form of academic dishonesty, as surely as if you used any other text the same way.

However, the problem of LLM "AI" and plagiarism cannot simply be answered by treating it like any other source needing proper citation.

The first part of this problem is that LLM "AI" by nature does not and cannot give you a reproducible answer, to which your reader could return through your citation in order to check your data.

LLM "AI" is not a reliable source, and it does not even function as a search engine pointing to other reliable sources.

The second part of this problem is that LLM "AI" by nature does not know or care about matters of fact. No matter how many facts may be in the training data, LLM "AI" is not programmed to understand that questions have factual answers.

Instead, LLM "AI" is designed strictly to reproduce patterns. It is designed to fill those patterns with language that looks more or less like the language in its training data, regardless of its meaning. And it is designed to be able to adjust the details of that language on demand to produce a version of the pattern that meets your expectations.

LLM "AI" reproduces familiar shapes, on demand, which it fills with words it hopes you want to hear. It makes things up. Even when it touches on factual information, it gets things wrong, and you cannot correct it in any meaningful way. Its only standard is the production of language you will like enough to stop questioning.

LLM "AI" does not "lie," but that is only because it has no sense of truth or falsehood. You must use yours.

The libraries at your disposal are full of reliable texts, which will still be there when you or your readers come back to them. These are also texts of which you must be critical, by authors you must cite properly. They may also be wrong, and you may even help prove some of them wrong, but that will be a meaningful disagreement, and maybe even a very important one!

Your library staff, alongside your seminary faculty and staff, will gladly help you through your process of becoming a capable and talented scholar using reliable resources. We look forward to being able to share with you in the pride of your legitimate accomplishments. Do not cheat yourself, and us, of that joy!