Cheating isn't the right word here. Crediting LLMs is about giving everyone involved accurate information which can be used for later decision making (e.g. if something unexpected happens as a result of a LLM-ism).
In a perfect world such a disclaimer would help anyone reading the output by setting expectations. We each have different experiences with this, and different levels of acceptance. Knowing that something is using generated content can help anyone either accept / skim / thoroughly review something.
The problem is that we're seeing lots of backlash, often for ideological reasons, or for outdated somewhat technical reasons, so people have less of an incentive to be honest, and tons of incentives to hide their use.
No one minds when I credit a fuzzer for finding a bug. I hope we can use the same pragmatic attitude for LLM help.
Also, I don't hear a lot of people credit fuzzers. I do hear a lot of people say things like "we are fuzzing the code"'just like they say "we are hammering the nails" and not "wow hammer great job getting that nail in place"
Case in point, the recent Hank Green incident. That was an own-goal of being too honest about LLM use and I suspect the industry learning will be "don't talk about the process." Larian Studios got in hot water earlier over a similar "we may use AI in preproduction" incident.
You piloted the LLM, you are responsible for the code. I don't sign my commits with "autocompletions by Intellij". This whole thing is nonsense.
As for the possibilities listed in TFA, I personally think the most common one is people just blaming the tool or hoping to use citation as cover for slop work. It's basically an admission of "I didn't look into this as thoroughly as I myself think I should have to really understand what I'm doing". Don't be that person. If you don't understand what you are doing prompt the LLM with questions until you do understand. It isn't difficult.
When I see it, it always makes me want to respond “weird, I asked Claude too and it said <different answer>”.
Sometimes the person asking just needs an estimate, a ballpark number. It doesn't really make a difference if it 17 or 18 support requests were received.
And even if you believe it's just a tool, a text generator that takes in and spits out the Internet, you should cite it like citing a website.
WCSTombs•53m ago
(You don't have to mention LLMs every time you use them because sometimes the credit really doesn't matter.)
> But for the first reason, I’d challenge the notion of sharing credit with a tool, let alone feeling like a cheat for using one.
That's the main reason LLMs aren't "just a tool."
> Credit and accountability are two sides of the same coin. A tool can only take as much credit as it can be held accountable for, so crediting it inadvertently dilutes your own accountability for the work.
Huh? No, credit and accountability are pretty orthogonal. I use tons of open-source tools, and everyone agrees that the respective authors get credit for what they made, but only I am accountable for my use of them. In fact, all open-source licenses spell this out explicitly.