ByLance Eliot,
Contributor.
In today’s column, I examine the swiftly emerging trend of people taking full and unwavering credit for the outputs generated by AI and large language models (LLMs), even when the prompt used by a person to spur the AI was nothing more than asking the AI to solve a vexing problem or answer a postulated question.
The gist is that the person takes credit for the resulting AI-generated solution or answer without acknowledging that the AI did all the heavy lifting. It is a classic case of not giving credit where credit is truly due. The person presents as if they have figured out the solution and emphasizes their intellectual acumen. Meanwhile, they hardly lifted a finger. All they did was ask the AI to find a solution for them. The mere act of posing a question to AI doesn’t seem to befit taking credit for personally finding an actual solution.
New research suggests that people are increasingly leaning into taking unwarranted credit for what AI produces as outputs. You might assume that those doing so are intentionally deceptive amid the desire to appear to be smart and mentally stellar. Though that certainly accounts for some people, many others seem to genuinely believe they produced the answer. I’ve previously noted that people are blurring the line of what AI did versus what they did, see the link here, and new research showcases how fast and far this tendency is spreading.
