Curious Companion: Is It Cheating if You Use AI?

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE

Inspired by a podcast episode my girlfriend recently listened to, I use this episode to tackle the question: “Is it cheating if you use AI”? Using the definition of cheating as a springboard, I break down why the school-and-sports framing most of us default when it comes to cheating, and why the topic warrants a more nuanced approach when considering AI. Along the way I discuss the role of the system at large, and round the episode out by diving into an equally exciting topic for me: how AI use affects trustworthiness.

The Space I Wanted

Let’s talk about cheating, y’all.

So, right off the bat, today’s topic really speaks to what I had in mind when I started this podcast/newsletter/blog. I wanted a space to talk about more than just the actual tech. I wanted a space to talk about how AI impacts our lives, how it influences things, how it changes and challenges things…and here we are.

Something I said very early on in one of my first few episodes (Episode 3: Is ChatGPT Killing Our Creativity?), was that I believed AI would hold up a mirror and ask us to judge how we’ve been doing things and why things in general are the way they are. As a country that values the outcome more than the process, that celebrates shortcuts, that worships money, that doesn’t support art, that is obsessed with capitalism and was founded on white supremacy, we shouldn’t be surprised with how some folks are choosing to use AI.

I do believe AI is holding up that mirror, and I’m excited to dive into the question: Is it cheating if you use AI?

Beyond the Silo

To me, the problem with the original question is that cheating as we all know it largely needs a rulebook and a referee of some sort. Cheating as we colloquially think about it comes from a school and sports framing, where there’s an agreed set of rules and violating them gives you an unfair advantage. I think the AI discussion is more nuanced than that, which is why when I looked up the definition, I went with the Wikipedia version:

According to Wikipedia: Cheating is the act of behaving dishonestly, breaking established rules, or violating trust to gain an unfair advantage or secure a personal benefit.

Part of the reason I like this definition is that it isn’t siloed to one use case; cheating in sport, cheating in a relationship, it encompasses them all.

So if we look at that definition again and ask our original question, ‘Is it cheating if you use AI?’, the question becomes: If you use AI, are you behaving dishonestly, breaking established rules, or violating trust to gain an unfair advantage or secure a personal benefit?

AI as an Easy Target

I think that a quick answer of “yes” partially comes from, like I’ve said in previous episodes, the fact that AI is the perfect target for everyone’s very justified frustration with the enshittification of everything. AI is low hanging fruit:

Not everyone has a use case
It makes mistakes
It’s being forced on us
The worst people ever are in charge of it and making a shit ton of money from it
Purported environmental impacts, namely regarding the water
Data centers being built in areas that disproportionately affect Black and brown people
Reported rising home energy bills

It’s easy to hate it, especially if you’ve never tried it.

Clearly, I’m on the other side of that. I really do enjoy AI. I think that the technology itself is fucking incredible. I’m way more concerned about its hacking capabilities than I am about its environmental impact. But also yes, the worst people are in charge, image and video are largely problematic, and we’re absolutely in an AI bubble. Both/and.

Perhaps my most “unpopular opinion”, as the wannabe influencers say, is that I actually don’t care if you use AI. I know that it’s become a sort of backlash badge of honor to say “I don’t use AI for anything I do as part of my work,“, but real talk, sometimes when I read that my first thought is, “Well maybe you should.”

AI can be incredibly efficient, and like I’ve said eleventy billion times, I care about that in terms of making time to do more stuff that you love, not in terms of increasing productivity for the sake of productivity and doing more work.

Questions Worth Asking

But circling back to today’s main topic, along with the definition of cheating: If you use AI, are you behaving dishonestly, breaking established rules, or violating trust to gain an unfair advantage or secure a personal benefit?’

My answer: It depends. (But if forced to pick a side, Imma say no.)

Clearly if someone is claiming expertise and just copy/pasting AI responses and scamming people out of their money, that’s cheating. Duh. But you and I both know that’s not what we’re discussing today.

What I like most about this question is that it, IMO, makes you stop and think:

What actually is cheating?
Who decides what cheating is?
Who gets a pass?
Does it apply to every situation?
How are other things that are currently being done different?
Why do we actually care?
Does it actually matter?
What role does the system at large play?
Is that person actually gaining an advantage?

I think when folks think of cheating and AI, they’re thinking shortcuts, they’re thinking unfair advantage. But is it actually an unfair advantage if everyone has access to it? Again, one might attempt to liken it to sport and respond with “Technically everyone has access to steroids.” To me this highlights the need for a zero sum game and a governing body in order to define cheating, and I just don’t think transfers 1:1 when discussing AI.

What About Trust?

A question that I think is worth asking, that I think might get tied in subconsciously when discussing cheating, is “is someone less trustworthy if they use AI?”

Again, my answer here is: it depends.

The first thing it depends on is how they’re using AI and what they’re using it for. Again, it goes without saying that if someone is claiming to have expertise in a domain and just parroting/copy-pasting AI and not disclosing that, then yes, that person is less trustworthy.

A slightly more nuanced take that ties in specifically to my line of work is using AI for any kind of copy, namely when not disclosed.

To me, if someone very clearly used AI for their copy, it’s not so much that the person is less trustworthy because they “cheated” in the traditional sense. To me it’s that I don’t feel I can trust them to get me the outcome I want. Not because I immediately think they’re trying to scam me, but because I’m not certain that they understand my specific situation/desires/needs/goals, and I’m unsure if they’ll take the time to do so or if they’ll simply outsource it to AI.

I don’t need to pay someone to do that, I can use AI all on my own.

To me, trust is tied in with a prediction about future behavior. So no, that person is not less trustworthy from a moral standpoint. But from a predicting-future-behavior standpoint, if they’re fully outsourcing to AI a task that I believe personal care to be an integral component of, I don’t trust them to get me that outcome, and thus I’m not hiring them.

So, yeah, it depends.

How I Used AI This Week

Each episode I share a quick example of how I used AI that week.

This week I used Claude to do a reverse search and find the assembly instructions for my best friend Jill’s L-shaped desk. I wound up not doing anything to the desk, but I needed to see the assembly instructions so I could plan out how I would modify it should she decide she wanted to switch it from left-facing to right-facing.

I had her send me a picture of it and I literally just put it into Claude and said, “Please find the exact make and model of this desk and name the building specs and assembly instructions.” The first return was super close but not the exact desk, though it did get the brand and collection name right. I corrected one feature about the desk and it was then able to find the correct make, model, and assembly instructions.

Super fast, super easy, and less clicking than the traditional reverse image search you can do with Google (though my guess is that the integrated Gemini would do this for you too, but I’m a Claude stan, at least for now).

Da Wrap-up

It took me quite some time to outline this episode, and I like that. I think it’s largely because it did force verbal accuracy, and made me think about what the core issue was, and what, if anything, I actually had a problem with (and why).

Working through this episode solidified my resolve that AI continues to be best used as an adjunct to, not a replacement for, those tasks that are uniquely human, and that we want a human to be performing.

Might those tasks change over time? I think it’s probably a mathematical certainty that they will, (because they already are) and those are exactly the discussions that I want to keep having.

As always, endlessly grateful for you and your curiosity.

Catch you next Thursday.

Maestro out.