how to write a good essay without plagiarism

10 Tips to Write a Perfect Research Paper without Plagiarism

• October 4, 2023

Research papers play a crucial role in academia. They allow us to delve deep into a subject, showcase our knowledge, and contribute to the world of science. However, one shadow looms over this noble pursuit: plagiarism. Plagiarism in research paper writing is a grave offense that can tarnish your academic reputation. Usually, only a maximum of 20% is standard in research paper writing. To help you navigate this challenging terrain, we’ve compiled ten essential tips on how to write a research paper without plagiarism.

What does plagiarism in research paper writing mean?

Plagiarism in research papers is a menace that you must tackle head-on. It occurs when a writer uses someone else’s work, ideas, or words without proper citation or attribution. Here’s why it’s so critical to avoid it:

• Academic integrity : Plagiarism breaches academic integrity, making it not acceptable in educational institutions worldwide.
• Loss of credibility : A plagiarized research paper can ruin your credibility as a researcher and writer.
• Legal consequences : Plagiarism might lead to legal troubles, especially in the academic and professional worlds.
• Stifles creativity : Writing should be a platform for expressing your unique ideas. Plagiarism stifles this creativity.

How to write a research paper without plagiarism?

Now that we understand the importance of avoiding plagiarism let’s explore how to write a research paper without falling into this trap:

Understand what plagiarism is

Before you can avoid it, you need to grasp what plagiarism is. Research papers require a balance between your original thoughts and ideas and the insights of others. Plagiarism occurs when you tip this balance by copying someone else’s work without proper attribution.

Use citations correctly

To write a non-plagiarized research paper, you must properly cite the sources you use in your research paper. Whether it’s a direct quote, paraphrased content, or a summarized idea, always give credit to the original author.

Plan your research

Start by conducting thorough research on your chosen topic. Take detailed notes and record your sources. This will make it easier to integrate these sources into your paper without inadvertently plagiarizing.

Paraphrase wisely

When using someone else’s ideas or words, paraphrase them while maintaining the original meaning. This demonstrates your understanding and avoids direct copying.

Use plagiarism detection tools

Before submitting your paper, run it through plagiarism detection tools. These tools can help you identify unintentional instances of plagiarism and correct them.

Stay informed about plagiarism policies

Be aware of your institution’s policies regarding plagiarism. Different schools and organizations may have varying definitions and consequences for plagiarism.

Proofread carefully

After completing your paper, proofread it meticulously to catch any lingering instances of plagiarism. Pay attention to citations, quotes, and references.

Remember the allowed percentage of citations in the paper

You can include no more than 10% of citations in your research paper. And don’t forget that introduction and conclusion must always be your own words.

Utilize multiple sources

Rely on a variety of sources for your research to minimize the temptation to plagiarize from a single prominent source. Use credible websites as well as academic peer-reviewed articles.

Use your unique voice

Ultimately, your research paper should reflect your unique perspective and analysis. Use your voice to present your ideas, and ensure that your work is original and distinct. Don’t try to copy other writers’ styles or ideas, just be yourself.

Other tips to avoid plagiarism in a research paper

In addition to the ten tips mentioned above, here are a few more strategies to help you avoid plagiarism in research paper:

• Create an outline . Organize your research paper with a clear outline. This will help you structure your arguments and ensure that your ideas flow coherently throughout the paper.
• Manage your time . Avoid last-minute rushes, as they often lead to hasty writing and unintentional plagiarism. Plan your time wisely to allow for thorough research, drafting, and revision.
• Seek guidance . If you’re unsure about proper citation or paraphrasing, don’t hesitate to seek guidance from your instructor or a research paper writer. They can provide valuable insights and examples. For example, you can ask for professional help from research paper writing service CustomWritings that offers valuable assistance in writing research papers and avoiding plagiarism.
• Give credit for common knowledge . You don’t need to cite everything. Common knowledge, widely accepted facts, and information that you can find in multiple sources may not require citations.
• Keep your research papers secure . Protect your research papers from unauthorized access. Be cautious when sharing your work online, and avoid posting it in public spaces where it can be easily copied.

Proper citation styles

Citing sources properly is critical to writing a research paper without plagiarism. Different academic disciplines often require specific citation styles, such as APA (American Psychological Association), MLA (Modern Language Association), or Chicago. Here’s how to navigate citation styles effectively:

• APA (American Psychological Association) Style

In-text Citations :

For in-text citations, include the author’s last name and the publication year in parentheses, e.g., (Smith, 2020).

Use “et al.” for in-text citations when referencing a source with three or more authors, e.g., (Smith et al., 2020).

Reference List :

Organize your reference list alphabetically by the author’s last name.

Include the author’s name, publication date, title of the work, source (journal, book, website, etc.), and a DOI (if available).

• MLA (Modern Language Association) Style

In-text Citations:

In MLA Style, employ parenthetical citations within the text to indicate your sources, e.g., “Recent studies have shown an increase in heart disease (Smith 45).”

Works Cited Page:

Compile a list of works cited, organized alphabetically by the author’s last name.

Include the author’s name, article title, journal title (italicized), publication year, volume, issue, and page numbers for journal articles.

• Chicago Style

Notes and Bibliography System (Humanities) :

Use footnotes or endnotes for in-text citations, providing a superscript number at the citation point.

In the notes, include the full citation details (author, title, publication, etc.).

In the bibliography, list sources alphabetically, following a specific format depending on the source type (book, journal, website, etc.).

• Author-Date System (Sciences) :

For in-text citations, include the author’s last name, publication year, and page number in parentheses, e.g., (Smith 2020, 45).

Create a reference list at the end of the paper, organized alphabetically by the author’s last name.

Include the author’s name, publication year, title, source, and page numbers (if applicable).

Let’s sum it up!

In conclusion, the ability to avoid plagiarism in a research paper is a skill that every research paper writer must master. By understanding the importance of academic integrity, learning proper citation techniques, and following these tips, you can confidently write an original, unique research paper that contributes to the academic world while avoiding the pitfalls of plagiarism. Remember, the path to success lies in your commitment to ethical research and writing practices.

Will Fastiggi

Originally from England, Will is an Upper Primary Coordinator now living in Brazil. He is passionate about making the most of technology to enrich the education of students.

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• Knowledge Base

How to Avoid Plagiarism | Tips on Citing Sources

Published on 6 December 2021 by Tegan George . Revised on 3 April 2023.

When you write an academic paper, you build upon the work of others and use various credible sources for information and evidence. To avoid plagiarism, you need to correctly incorporate these sources into your text.

• Keeping track of the sources you consult in your research
• Paraphrasing or quoting from your sources (and adding your own ideas)
• Crediting the original author in an in-text citation and in your reference list
• Using a plagiarism checker before you submit

Even accidental plagiarism can have serious consequences , so take care with how you integrate sources into your writing.

Table of contents

Keeping track of your sources, avoiding plagiarism when quoting, avoiding plagiarism when paraphrasing, citing your sources correctly, using a plagiarism checker, checklist: plagiarism prevention, free lecture slides, frequently asked questions about plagiarism.

One of the most common ways that students commit plagiarism is by simply forgetting where an idea came from and unintentionally presenting it as their own. You can easily avoid this pitfall by keeping your notes organised and compiling a list of citations as you go.

Clearly label which thoughts are yours and which aren’t in your notes, highlight statements that need citations, and carefully mark any text copied directly from a source with quotation marks.

In the example below, red indicates a claim that requires a source, blue indicates information paraphrased or summarised from a source, and green indicates a direct quotation.

Notes for my paper on global warming

• Greenhouse gas emissions trap heat and raise global temperatures [cite details]
• Causes more severe weather: hurricanes, fires, water scarcity [cite examples]
• Animal habitats across the world are under threat from climate change [cite examples]
• Just this year, 23 species have been declared extinct (BBC News 2021)
• ‘Animals are changing shape… some are growing bigger wings, some are sprouting longer ears and others are growing larger bills’ in order to cool off (Zeldovich 2021)

Managing sources with the Scribbr Citation Generator

To make your life easier later, make sure to write down the full details of every source you consult. That includes not only books and journal articles, but also things like websites, magazine articles, and videos. This makes it easy to go back and check where you found a phrase, fact, or idea that you want to use in your paper.

Scribbr’s Citation Generator allows you to start building and managing your reference list as you go, saving time later. When you’re ready to submit, simply download your reference list!

Generate accurate citations with Scribbr

Prevent plagiarism, run a free check..

Quoting means copying a piece of text word for word. The copied text must be introduced in your own words, enclosed in quotation marks , and correctly attributed to the original author.

In general, quote sparingly. Quotes are appropriate when:

• You’re using an exact definition, introduced by the original author
• It is impossible for you to rephrase the original text without losing its meaning
• You’re analyzing the use of language in the original text
• You want to maintain the authority and style of the author’s words

Long quotations should be formatted as block quotes . But for longer blocks of text, it’s usually better to paraphrase instead.

Paraphrasing means using your own words to explain something from a source.

Paraphrasing does not mean just switching out a few words from a copy-pasted text. To paraphrase properly, you should rewrite the author’s point in your own words to show that you have fully understood it.

Every time you quote or paraphrase, you must include an in-text or footnote citation clearly identifying the original author. Each citation must correspond to a full reference in the reference list or bibliography at the end of your paper.

This acknowledges the source of your information, avoiding plagiarism, and it helps your readers locate the source for themselves if they would like to learn more.

There are many different citation styles, each with its own rules. Your instructor may assign a particular style for you to use, or you may be able to choose. The most important thing is to apply one style consistently throughout the text.

The examples below follow APA Style .

Citing a single source

Citing multiple sources.

If you quote multiple sources in one sentence, make sure to cite them separately so that it’s clear which material came from which source.

To create correctly formatted source citations, you can use our free Citation Generator.

APA Citation Generator MLA Citation Generator

And if you’re citing in APA Style, consider using Scribbr’s Citation Checker , a unique tool that scans your citations for errors. It can detect inconsistencies between your in-text citations and your reference list, as well as making sure your citations are flawlessly formatted.

Most universities use plagiarism checkers like Turnitin to detect potential plagiarism. Here’s how plagiarism checkers work : they scan your document, compare it to a database of webpages and publications, and highlight passages that appear similar to other texts.

Consider using a plagiarism checker yourself before submitting your paper. This allows you to identify issues that could constitute accidental plagiarism, such as:

• Forgotten or misplaced citations
• Missing quotation marks
• Paraphrased material that’s too similar to the original text

Then you can easily fix any instances of potential plagiarism.

There are differences in accuracy and safety between plagiarism checkers. To help students choose, we conducted extensive research comparing the best plagiarism checkers .

When using someone else’s exact words, I have properly formatted them as a quote .

When using someone else’s ideas, I have properly paraphrased , expressing the idea completely in my own words.

I have included an in-text citation every time I use words, ideas, or information from a source.

Every source I cited is included in my reference list or bibliography .

I have consistently followed the rules of my required citation style .

I have not committed self-plagiarism by reusing any part of a previous paper.

I have used a reliable plagiarism checker as a final check.

Your document should be free from plagiarism!

Are you a teacher or lecturer who would like to educate your students about plagiarism? You can download our free lecture slides, available for Google Slides and Microsoft PowerPoint.

Open Google Slides Download PowerPoint

Accidental plagiarism is one of the most common examples of plagiarism . Perhaps you forgot to cite a source, or paraphrased something a bit too closely. Maybe you can’t remember where you got an idea from, and aren’t totally sure if it’s original or not.

These all count as plagiarism, even though you didn’t do it on purpose. When in doubt, make sure you’re citing your sources . Also consider running your work through a plagiarism checker tool prior to submission, which work by using advanced database software to scan for matches between your text and existing texts.

Scribbr’s Plagiarism Checker takes less than 10 minutes and can help you turn in your paper with confidence.

To avoid plagiarism when summarising an article or other source, follow these two rules:

• Write the summary entirely in your own words by   paraphrasing the author’s ideas.
• Reference the source with an in-text citation and a full reference so your reader can easily find the original text.

Plagiarism can be detected by your professor or readers if the tone, formatting, or style of your text is different in different parts of your paper, or if they’re familiar with the plagiarised source.

Many universities also use   plagiarism detection software like Turnitin’s, which compares your text to a large database of other sources, flagging any similarities that come up.

It can be easier than you think to commit plagiarism by accident. Consider using a   plagiarism checker prior to submitting your essay to ensure you haven’t missed any citations.

Some examples of plagiarism include:

• Copying and pasting a Wikipedia article into the body of an assignment
• Quoting a source without including a citation
• Not paraphrasing a source properly (e.g. maintaining wording too close to the original)
• Forgetting to cite the source of an idea

The most surefire way to   avoid plagiarism is to always cite your sources . When in doubt, cite!

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the ‘Cite this Scribbr article’ button to automatically add the citation to our free Reference Generator.

George, T. (2023, April 03). How to Avoid Plagiarism | Tips on Citing Sources. Scribbr. Retrieved 2 April 2024, from https://www.scribbr.co.uk/preventing-plagiarism/avoiding-plagiarism/

Is this article helpful?

Tegan George

Other students also liked, consequences of mild, moderate & severe plagiarism, the 5 types of plagiarism | explanations & examples, what is self-plagiarism | definition & how to avoid it.

Ultimate Guide to Writing Your College Essay

Tips for writing an effective college essay.

College admissions essays are an important part of your college application and gives you the chance to show colleges and universities your character and experiences. This guide will give you tips to write an effective college essay.

Want free help with your college essay?

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Writing a strong college admissions essay

Learn about the elements of a solid admissions essay.

Avoiding common admissions essay mistakes

Learn some of the most common mistakes made on college essays

Brainstorming tips for your college essay

Stuck on what to write your college essay about? Here are some exercises to help you get started.

How formal should the tone of your college essay be?

Learn how formal your college essay should be and get tips on how to bring out your natural voice.

Taking your college essay to the next level

Hear an admissions expert discuss the appropriate level of depth necessary in your college essay.

Student Stories

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Get the perspective of a current college student on how he approached the admissions essay.

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Student Story: Admissions essay about community impact

Student story: admissions essay about a past mistake, how to write a college application essay, tips for writing an effective application essay, sample college essay 1 with feedback, sample college essay 2 with feedback.

This content is licensed by Khan Academy and is available for free at www.khanacademy.org.

As a student, you are expected to write an essay as a part of almost all your courses. When faced with the task of submitting multiple assignments, essays, term papers, etc. you might be tempted to write an essay by copy-pasting someone else’s work.

Copying someone else’s work without giving them due credit constitutes plagiarism. Sometimes due to a lack of experience or knowledge, you might plagiarise someone else’s work. Submitting plagiarised work is unethical and dishonest.

Write an Essay: Plagiarism Free

When you write an essay with plagiarised content you can land into serious trouble at your University. Plagiarism is considered to be a serious offense that can lead to you failing the course or facing a possible suspension. Submitting a plagiarized essay is similar to committing theft. 

When you write an essay you need to ensure that your work is 100% original and wherever you have used information from somewhere its sources are cited correctly. 

Give yourself time

Giving yourself ample time is required to carry out in-depth research and avoid plagiarism of someone else’s work due to lack of time. Before you start to write an essay, you should list out what you intend to add to the essay. This will help you know how much information from other sources you plan to add. 

In-depth research will also increase your interest in the topic making it easier for you to add your own ideas when you write an essay. This way you will be less tempted to copy someone else’s work. 

Keep a track of sources

Before you begin to write an essay, keep a diary or a notebook handy. Note down all the sources you have used along with the name of the author, the title of the book or the paper, year of publication, and the relevant page numbers.

When you are reading multiple books and other reference materials it is easy to get confused in what piece of information was taken from which source. Keeping the details of your sources in one place can help you with referencing at a later stage. 

Proofread your work

Proofreading after you write an essay not only helps in correcting grammatical and typographical errors but can also help in identifying plagiarism. When you proofread your essay you get an option of giving due credit wherever you might have missed out earlier. 

Cite correctly

Accurately citing all sources when you write an essay is very important. Sometimes the same information might be present in different sources, taking out some time to trace the primary source is vital. A correct way to cite is to provide all the necessary information of the primary source i.e. the author.  It is also important to follow the correct citation style.

There are various academically recognized citation styles such as APA, Chicago, MLA, etc. You can find out the one your institution follows or can use one of the standard styles.  Information that is common knowledge indeed not be cited. As facts and common knowledge are not copyrighted.  

Each in-text citation should correspond with the complete bibliography or reference list given at the end of your essay. 

Paraphrase when needed

Paraphrasing involves interpreting the idea and describing it in your own words. Do not repeat the original idea verbatim. After paraphrasing, remember to give credit to the original author for the idea. You can give credit to the author at the beginning of the paragraph and then go on to explain the idea or concept yourself.  An easy way to check this is to make sure that no two words in a row are repeated verbatim. 

Quote appropriately

Any quotes used while you write an essay should be written precisely as it was written by the original author. Try to use shorter quotes and limit the number of quotes you use. Every quote has to be enclosed within quotation marks. Do remember to add a citation after the quotes so that due credit is given to the original author. 

Add your own inputs

Add your own insights and thoughts on the topic. Do not rely completely on other sources for writing an essay. This will demonstrate that you have studied the topic in-depth and will help you score a better grade. Just paraphrasing content from books and the internet will not count as your own work. You have to understand the topic, read the viewpoints of various authors and add your own ideas to it.

Use a plagiarism checker

When you write an essay make sure to run it through a plagiarism checker There is various software available online which can check your essay for potential plagiarism in minutes. You have the option of choosing from paid or free plagiarism checkers. 

Even after using a plagiarism checker, re-read your work to make sure that your essay is 100% original. So if you’re wondering how to check plagiarism just know that it’s simple and you can google it itself.

Avoid self-plagiarism

If you have earlier written an essay or a paper on the same or a similar topic you might feel it is okay to copy from that as it was your own work. But if that work has already been submitted you cannot borrow ideas from it without giving yourself credit. Copying from your own work without giving credit would be considered as self-plagiarism and is not acceptable. 

Take essay writing help

To write an essay that is completely free from plagiarism takes practice and patience. Even after following the above steps if you feel you are unable to write an essay that can pass the plagiarism test you can take help. 

Plagiarism-free essay writing with TutorBin

The essay writing help service at TutorBin can provide you with essays that are 100% original, free from plagiarism. These essays are not only plagiarism-free but also of the highest quality ensuring that you score good grades. 

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Writing Essay without Plagiarism: 9 ways to avoid plagiarism

Simple Ways on How to Write Your Essay Without Plagiarism

As a student, almost every course requires you to create non-plagiarized essays. Plagiarism is taking credit for someone else’s work without giving them due credit. It is copying or taking someone else’s original ideas, thoughts, ideas, or expressions as your own.

Plagiarism is considered stealing and a breach of academic integrity and journalistic ethics.

Whether it is deliberate or unintentional, it is unethical and dishonest. Plagiarism is defined differently in educational situations depending on the institution.

The details of your institution’s plagiarism policy, and plagiarism examples, are usually in your code of conduct. Thus, if you have any questions, ask your instructor.

How to Write Essays without Plagiarism

Do your homework, think critically, write in your own words, and credit your sources correctly. You will be able to write essays without plagiarism if you do so.

The bottom line is to:

1. Paraphrase

Paraphrasing is all about interpreting and articulating a concept in your own words. Don’t simply restate the original concept. Use your own words to convey the essential points.

Remember to acknowledge the original author for the concept when you’ve finished paraphrasing.

You can thank the author at the start of the paragraph. After which, you can discuss the concept or idea yourself. An effective approach to confirm is making sure no two words in a row are repeated verbatim.

So, rephrase other authors’ ideas using a rich vocabulary while retaining the same meaning.

Many internet paraphrase tools can avoid plagiarism. If you need to replace the wording while keeping the original meaning. Choose one of them to find an appropriate synonym.

Analyze the text and uniquely present the processed material.

2. Research

You must allow yourself enough time to conduct an in-depth study to get a clear understanding of what the essay is about. It prevents you from plagiarizing someone else’s work owing to a lack of time. You should make a list of what you want to include in your essay before you begin writing it.

Before you start, double-check all unfamiliar words and phrases.

It ensures that you are using another author’s research in the proper context. It will assist you in determining how much information from other sources you intend to incorporate. In-depth research will also pique your interest in the subject.

It makes it easier to incorporate your thoughts when writing an essay. You will be less likely to plagiarize someone else’s work if you do it this way.

To avoid plagiarism, list all the information sources you used when writing your paper. Whenever you use other authors’ ideas, you must refer to the sources.

Provide a list of the works cited so your teacher knows you didn’t steal anyone’s ideas and just duplicated them to indicate that well-known experts agree with you.

3. Track your Sources

Get a diary or a notebook before you start writing an essay. Make a list of all the sources you have used. Include the author’s name and the title of the book or paper, the year it was published, and the appropriate page numbers.

When reading many books and other reference materials, it’s easy to lose track of the source of each piece of information. Having all your sources’ information in one location can make referencing easier later.

4. Follow the steps

Make a plan and an outline for your essay. Essays require an introduction, body paragraphs, and a conclusion a.

Make a quick list of what you want to address in each body paragraph ahead of time and stick to it to avoid repeating yourself or going around in circles.

When writing an essay, it is critical to cite your sources correctly. When the same information appears in multiple sources, it is critical to take the time to track down the source.

A proper citation includes all of the source’s information, including the author’s name. It is also critical to adhere to the correct citation format.

Many academically accepted citation formats exist, such as MLA, APA, Chicago, etc.

You can pick one of the common styles or find out which one your institution prefers. It is not appropriate to quote information that is widely known.

Facts and common knowledge are not copyrighted and are free to use. Each in-text citation should match the bibliography or reference list after your paper.

6. Use a plagiarism checker

It is one of the most effective methods for preventing and detecting plagiarism immediately. You can see which paragraphs need improving by using plagiarism checkers.

7. Proofread your work

After writing an essay, proofreading can help you uncover plagiarism and correct typographical and grammatical issues.

When you proofread your essay, you can give credit where it is due and where you may have overlooked anything previously.

8. Hire an essay writer

There is a technique to make your life easier if college assignments seem overwhelming. Online, a professional essay writer service is available that offers numerous advantages.

They provide plagiarism-free essays. It is also a simple approach to getting high-quality work quickly. Hiring writers is the best way to write an essay without involving yourself in writing and getting the grade hassle-free.

You also save money by not purchasing pricey textbooks from campus bookstores. And you save time by not spending hours researching academic essay ideas at home.

It allows you to devote more time to the tasks that will help you achieve academically. It includes catching up on past assignments or preparing harder for impending tests.

The essays done by professionals are legal.

9. Spin the text

Article spinning is a technique that replaces words or phrases with synonyms to create new material that appears to be unique. The rewriting tools can help you to rewrite text to avoid plagiarism.

Why is Plagiarism Bad?

Plagiarism is a form of stealing that obstructs the learning process by disguising the sources of your ideas. It also results in poor writing in most cases. Even if you get away with it, plagiarism is detrimental to your learning.

There are several compelling reasons for you and your institutions to take it seriously, including:

• Impairs learning: If you steal words and ideas from others, your creativity lacks challenge, and you are not learning.
• Bad writing: Regardless of the quality of the work you plagiarize, a paper made up of a patchwork of unknown sources is usually a disaster.
• It harms the author; even you wouldn’t want your work stolen and passed off as someone else’s.
• Is deceitful: Plagiarism, when done on purpose, suggests that the individual responsible is not truthful about their work, which is an issue in any situation.

Consequences of Plagiarism in Essays

Plagiarism has a slew of long-term implications. A student found guilty of plagiarizing may be barred from applying to another college or university in the future. No school will admit a student who has a history of academic dishonesty.

Most institutions feel that education encompasses more than academics and that character and integrity are equally vital.

It is essential to realize that university placement is competitive. So, having a poor academic record will make it more difficult to be accepted. Plagiarism charges can lead to failure on an assignment, grade reduction, or an obligation to attend a workshop on plagiarism.

If it is a repeat offense, the student can also face suspension or expulsion, sullying their reputation.

James Lotta

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How to Write an Article Without Plagiarizing

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• Melania Trump plagiarism row: Staffer admit role in speech. (2016, July 20). BBC News. [online] Available at: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-36850215 [Accessed 21 Jan. 2018].
• Palmquist. (2009). The Bedford Researcher with 2009 MLA and 2010 APA Updates, 3rd Edition. [Bookshelf Online]. Retrieved from https://bookshelf.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781457600838/ p.88-91, 97.
• Plagiarism. (n.d.). Retrieved January 20, 2018, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/plagiarism
• US reporter ‘lied to readers’. 2003, May 11) BBC News. [online] Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3018505.stm [Accessed 21 Jan. 2018].
• White Paper The Ethics Of Self Plagiarism. (2011) iParadigms LLC.

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How to Paraphrase without Plagiarism: A Detailed Guide with Examples

Paraphrasing effectively while avoiding plagiarism is a common pain point for writers across all levels of expertise. The fear of accidentally plagiarising someone else’s work or failing to give credit where it’s due can plague you from even starting to write.

However, instead of fearing, prepare yourself with this step-by-step guide to learn how to paraphrase without plagiarism. Whether you’re a student racing against a deadline or a researcher aiming for accuracy and originality, this guide is the key to effectively paraphrase for plagiarism-free academic writing.

Table of Contents

What is Paraphrasing?

Paraphrasing is the act of restating someone else’s ideas or information in your own words. It involves expressing the same meaning as the original text but using different words and sentence structures.

Paraphrasing is commonly used to avoid plagiarism, integrate evidence into writing, and simplify complex information for better understanding. It’s an essential skill in academic and professional writing, allowing writers to convey information effectively while maintaining originality and clarity.

Understanding Paraphrasing, Quoting, and Summarizing

When writing an academic paper, you will likely need to incorporate source material to support your ideas and analysis. There are three main ways to do this – paraphrasing, quoting, and summarizing. However, each approach varies in how closely your writing reflects the original source.

• Paraphrasing
• Rephrases the original text in your own words
• Should condense the original information using different phrasing and sentence structures
• Retains the full meaning of the original text
• Must always attribute the source using in-text citations
• Uses the exact words from the original source
• Places word-for-word passages in quotation marks
• Should quote briefly to highlight key phrases or ideas
• Must match the original exactly
• Requires in-text citations to attribute quotes
• Summarizing
• Puts the main points of a passage into your own words
• Greatly condenses the original to provide a broad overview
• Much shorter than the original text
• Must include attribution to the original source

Using the appropriate mix of quotes, paraphrases, and summaries adds credibility to your content by referencing source texts. This demonstrates your authority on the topic and ensures academic honesty through proper citation. Here is a draft section on when to paraphrase:

When to Paraphrase?

Paraphrasing is an essential skill in academic writing and could be used for following purposes:

• To Clarify Ideas

Paraphrase when you need to clarify or simplify a short, complex passage from a source text to ensure better reader comprehension. This demonstrates deep understanding of difficult concepts on the author’s part.

• To avoiding Over-Quotation

Choosing to paraphrase instead of relying heavily on direct quotations enables the smooth integration of external ideas in your own writing style.

• To Eliminate Non-Essential Wording

When the original text contains non-essential wording, paraphrasing allows you to focus selectively on the most relevant information and explain the main points, enhancing clarity and conciseness.

• To Reporting Statistical Data

Paraphrase when you need to report numerical data or statistics. This is preferred in APA format over directly quoting such information.

Strategies on How to Paraphrase Without Plagiarising

It is important to thoroughly understand the original text to grasp its main ideas before paraphrasing. Then to effectively paraphrase in order to avoid plagiarism and yet convey the information you can adopt a combination of following strategies:

• Use alternative vocabulary

This strategy involves replacing key terms in the original passage with synonyms, adding variety and clarity to the text.

Original text : The scientist conducted experiments to test the credibility of the study

Paraphrased text : The researcher carried out trials to evaluate the reliability of the study

• Modify the parts of speech

Modifying the grammatical structure of sentences can provide a fresh perspective. For instance, modifying the parts of speech by changing an adjective to an adverb can rephrase a sentence. However, its effectiveness relies on the wording of the original passage, thus it must be used in combination with other strategies.

Original text: He is a careful driver.

Paraphrased text: He drives carefully.

• Changing the structure

Reorganizing the sequence of phrases and clauses can lead to new sentences while preserving the original meaning. When doing so, use active voice whenever possible and reserve passive voice only for situations when it is absolutely necessary.

Original text: The chef carefully prepared the ingredients before cooking the meal.

Paraphrased text: Before cooking the meal, the chef meticulously prepared the ingredients.

• Adding or removing piece of content

Adjusting the content by adding or omitting information can help tailor the paraphrased version. You can add your own take on an existing quote to elaborate on the context. While doing so, it must be ensured that the core message remains unaltered.

Original text: Reading for pleasure fosters creativity and empathy in children.

Paraphrased text: Engaging in recreational activities such as reading can stimulate creativity among youngsters.

• Citing your sources

If you use a specific phrase from the original, enclose it in quotation marks and attribute it correctly. Always cite the original source, including author, title, publication date, and other relevant details. Proper paraphrasing and citation prevent plagiarism and enhance your work with valuable sources.

Original text: The amendment made changes to Section 40 of the Voting Rights Act, which bans any voting practice that discriminates against racial or language minorities.

Paraphrased text : The amendment in 2020 updated Section 40 of the Voting Rights Act, making it illegal to have any voting practices that are discriminatory towards racial or linguistic minority groups (Smith, 2020).

Further, use paraphrasing tools for streamlining the process of efficient and employ plagiarism checker tools to establish the authenticity of your content.

Using AI Effectively to Paraphrase Without Plagiarism

One of the most efficient ways to rework existing content is by using an advanced paraphrasing tool.

Trinka’s paraphrasing tool offers a customised and error-free paraphrasing option. Its user-friendly interface makes on-demand paraphrasing highly accessible. Within seconds, Trinka delivers reworked content that maintains meaning while transforming vocabulary and style.

• Multiple paraphrasing options to choose from
• Customizable degree of variation
• Automatic grammar error correction
• One-click, instant paraphrasing
• Clarity and Precision – Help academic writers maintain clarity, accuracy, and proper usage of technical terminology by transforming text while preserving its original meaning, ensuring that the content remains clear, precise, and academically
• Maintaining Academic Integrity – Assist writers in avoiding plagiarism by rephrasing content in their own words while still accurately conveying the intended message, thus upholding academic integrity
• Efficiency in Research Writing – Enhances the efficiency by quickly rewording text, saving time for researchers to focus on analyzing data, conducting experiments, and developing original insights, without being hindered by manual rephrasing tasks

4 simple steps to follow to paraphrase using Trinka

Step 1: Input the desired text into the left panel after selecting the ‘Paraphraser’ option from the vertical toolbar on the right.

Step 2: Choose either specific sentences or the entire content for paraphrasing.

Step 3: Adjust the degree of change desired using the options at the top of the right panel. The paraphrased text will be displayed in the right panel. Further alternatives can be explored by clicking on suggested paraphrases.

Step 4: Once satisfied with the alternatives, the paraphrased content is finally ready for your use.

By following a step by step approach outlined above and understanding the examples, you can master the art of paraphrasing and enhance the clarity and originality of your work.

FAQ's on Paraphrasing

Effective paraphrasing involves understanding the original text, expressing its ideas in your own words while maintaining the original meaning, and properly citing the source.

To paraphrase a quote, read the original text carefully, understand its meaning, and then rephrase it in your own words without changing the original intent. Ensure that the paraphrased version accurately reflects the original idea.

When paraphrasing, you must still give credit to the original source. Use an in-text citation that includes the author's name and the publication year, followed by a reference entry in the bibliography or works cited page.

To paraphrase a sentence, read it thoroughly, understand its meaning, and then rewrite it using different words and sentence structure while retaining the original idea. Be careful not to change the meaning or misrepresent the original text.

In APA format, paraphrasing requires providing the author's name and the publication year in the in-text citation. Additionally, include a full reference entry in the references list at the end of your document.

To paraphrase without plagiarizing, ensure that you fully understand the original text before rewriting it in your own words. Use proper citation to acknowledge the source, and avoid closely mimicking the original text's structure or wording.

When paraphrasing a research paper, focus on conveying the author's ideas accurately while using your own words and sentence structure. Ensure that the paraphrased content is coherent and properly cited according to the required citation style, such as APA or MLA.

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Avoiding Plagiarism in a Research Paper

Are you struggling with the problem of plagiarism when doing your research? It is a must to learn how not to plagiarize in research paper. It is crucial for your student integrity and your reputation as an author. Read this article and learn how not to plagiarize, even unintentionally, in your research.

There are different types of research paper , but these recommendations apply to any written work. Read this article step by step, and you will know why.

Writing Without Plagiarism

Let us define plagiarism. Basically, this is presenting another person’s words or ideas as your own, without proper citation or giving a credit to the source. This is an act of fraud, and the consequences may be severe. This is why it is important to avoid plagiarism in your research.

Why is i t  so bad?

Plagiarism can only be defined in the negative terms. These are only a few of its negative traits and consequences. It is:

• Unethical in the moral sense
• Dishonest and misleading for the ignorant readers
• Impolite to the sources you use
• Lying about your authorship
• There are academic and legal consequences

Plagiarism. How to Avoid It .

How to do it? Are there ways to avoid plagiarism, or, at least, ways to prevent plagiarism? You cannot avoid using other people’s ideas and word when you are researching a topic. But these words and ideas should be treated with respect and recognition. You are only borrowing these words and ideas.

Even though there are limits to which some sort of plagiarism is acceptable (some give 10%, some – 15%), no literal straight plagiarism is allowed. You should write your own original work, and give credit to all of the ideas and words you use. The numbers that are mentioned are the acceptable limits to the quotation in research paper. Ideally, you should be able to write your research paper without citing everything.

Try to paraphrase, and remember that each word has a synonym. Using synonymous words is still plagiarism. Rewrite the text fully in your own words, with your own position, and learn to use references in research paper.

Useful Tips

Here are the 5 useful tips for you how to write without plagiarism. Any plagiarism can be avoided by one simple thing: submitting your own original work and by expressing your unique position and thesis. Any sources you use only help you to back up your point and make your position look stronger.

Use these simple techniques. Let’s look at them. Even if you are not going to write yourself, and plan to buy research online , your text should contain no plagiarism. The general rule is no plagiarizing, even indirectly. The best strategy to survive is doing your own work.

• Use proper quotation

Give the exact quote from the author’s source in your text, if you use it directly. Use the quotation mark or a proper indent, to visibly distinguish another author’s words from your own. A direct quote without the quotation marks looks like plagiarism.

• Use the citation

Cite your used sources according to the style guide used at your academic institution. Cite every single thing you quote. In brackets show the name of the author and a page number, and give a list of references at the end of your work. Do not ether use quotes without citations, or citations without quotes, both must be used!

• Use paraphrase

You may get tired of citing everything in your text. Do not quote every sentence. It is possible to somehow change the words of your source author. Rewrite them in your own words, use “As X states in his investigation…”, or “According to…”. Only specific terms should be used as they are.

• Write your own text

The best strategy to prevent plagiarizing in your text is to write fully your own work. Keep all citing to the minimum. Develop your own position based on what you have learned. Most of your paper, its tone and style, should your own and unique. Preventing plagiarism and avoiding it as much as you can is your goal.

• Use plagiarism checkers

There is a helpful software that checks your text for plagiarism. These programs are used to detect whether the content is unique. Your course instructor will most likely use such software to check your submitted paper. So cheating will never help you with it. You can buy a work, many students use the services for getting cheap research papers , but the rule that there should be no plagiarism, and that you should submit your own work is still there.

We must always submit our own genuine work, be it a research paper, a book report, an article, or a book. Read this article, and submit a work that is free of plagiarism. Cite and quote properly, write all the main points in your own words, develop your own unique position, check your work not only for errors but for the presence of plagiarism. Good luck with your studies!

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Essay Rewriter Tool for Students

The Essay Rewriter tool is easy to use. Follow these steps to obtain a perfectly paraphrased text.

• Copy the original that you need to rewrite.
• Paste it into the tool, checking if the text length doesn’t exceed the limit.
• Select the required paraphrasing rate.
• Press the “Rewrite” button.
• Copy the result for further use.

Wondering how to avoid plagiarism in a paper or article? You are welcome to use the essay rewriter tool above. It was designed for academic purposes. Easily paraphrase texts in no time!

• ✅ The Benefits of the Tool
• ✍️ Avoiding Plagiarism with a Rewriter

🆚 Quoting vs. Rewriting vs. Plagiarism

🔗 references, ✅ essay rewriter: 5 key benefits.

• It helps to avoid plagiarism. Not all plagiarism happens intendedly. Essay Rewriter eliminates the human factor in paraphrasing. It provides you with a text that contains a preset quantity of original words.
• It is specially designed for students. The rephrasing is neither too academic nor conversational. The style of the resulting text perfectly fits all educational requirements.
• It is simple to use. It would be strange to waste your time exploring a tool that should save it. Essay Rewriter is intuitively clear. You can open the web page and use it straight away.
• It has an adjustable percentage of paraphrased words. Sometimes you need to preserve some part of the original. Try various rates to choose the best result.
• It is equally functional on computers and mobile devices. You can use the tool at home or college from your smartphone. All the features will be available in the mobile version.

✍️ Rewriter Tool: An Easy Way to Avoid Plagiarism

Want to know when rewriting means plagiarizing?

It is easy.

When you use someone else’s intellectual property, pretending it’s your own, you plagiarize. When you reword a text that another person wrote without referencing the original, it is plagiarism.

Unfortunately, even if you unwillingly copy someone’s text, it is also punishable . The consequences range from lowered marks and reprimanding to expulsion from the educational institution or research community. Nobody likes plagiarizers. People perceive them as thieves.

Still, every researcher resorts to paraphrasing. What is the recipe for the balance between rewriting and plagiarism? The short answer is, always mention the original . There are more nuances, like retelling the text with your own words rather than using synonyms here and there. But whichever method or app you use, give credit to the author.

When you wish to use someone else’s words as a part of your writing, you insert a quote . In this case, you are supposed to enclose the phrase or sentence in quotation marks to signal that you are quoting. After that, include a citation with page number and author’s name.

When should you quote?

There is a general rule that if more than four words in a row match the source, you should enclose them in quotation marks.

But if the sentence or paragraph you wish to use is too long, it is better to paraphrase it. In such a case, quotation marks are unnecessary. Still, paraphrases also require citations at the end of the rewritten text and in the list of references. Make sure to modify the words and their order to avoid plagiarism.

You can consult the examples of quoting, rewriting, and plagiarism examples below. Compare them to find out the difference and never have problems using someone else’s text in your research article or essay.

Quoting: Example

The quote from a book by Oliver Sacks below contains quotation marks and a reference to the original according to APA citation style.

“The scientific study of the relationship between brain and mind began in 1861, when Broca, in France, found that specific difficulties in the expressive use of speech, aphasia, consistently followed damage to a particular portion of the left hemisphere of the brain. This opened the way to cerebral neurology, which made it possible, over the decades, to ‘map’ the human brain, ascribing specific powers — linguistic, intellectual, perceptual, etc. — to equally specific ‘centers’ in the brain. Toward the end of the century it became evident to more acute observers that this sort of mapping was too simple, that all mental performances had an intricate internal structure, and must have an equally complex physiological basis.” (Sacks, 1998, p. 5)

Rewriting: Example

The rewriting sample below contains all the essential features. All the grammatical structures of the sentences have been modified. Most words have been replaced with synonyms, and most importantly, it contains a reference to the original . You can use this example as a good one.

In “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: And Other Clinical Tales,” Sacks (1998) describes the beginning of the research on brain and mind. In particular, Broca was the first to discover the relationship between aphasia and the damaged section of the left hemisphere. This finding started a breakthrough in cerebral neurology. In some decades, people described the brain’s structure with respect to its functions and the centers responsible for them. Later, researchers found that this approach overly simplified mental processes. On the contrary, the human brain has a complicated psychological structure, and its functioning is much more intricate.

Plagiarism: Example

This plagiarism sample does not change the sentence structure and frequently uses the same word order. Deleting the subordinate parts of sentences and changing some words with synonyms does not suffice for a good rewriting. Plagiarism checkers will recognize this passage as the original . But if your poor rewriting is revealed, you will be punished. Its main drawback is the absence of credit to the original.

The study of the brain and mind began in 1861 when Broca found that specific difficulties in the expressive use of speech usually followed damage to the left hemisphere of the brain. This gave impetus to the development of cerebral neurology, which made it possible to ‘map’ the human brain. Scientists ascribed specific powers — intellectual, linguistic, perceptual, etc. — to some particular areas in the brain. At the end of the century, it became evident that such mapping was too simple. Therefore, all mental activities had a complicated internal structure, and they must have an equally intricate physiological basis.

Hope the tips and examples above are useful for you. By the way, summarizing the sources you use is another way to avoid plagiarism – in case you mention the author, of course. If you need to summarize anything, use our free tool !

❓ Essay Rewriter Tool: FAQ

Rewrite means paraphrasing the original writing to obtain a new text. The level of plagiarism defines the quality of rewriting, i.e., the lower, the better. Currently, there are hundreds of free online rewriting tools, including Essay Rewriter, that can transform any text into an original with zero plagiarism.

• Read the source, making notes of the essentials.
• Start each sentence from a different point, as compared to the original.
• Rewrite only the most significant parts, leaving out the less critical ones.
• Skip all the previous issues and automatize the process with Essay Rewriter.

Essay Rewriter is the best online tool to rewrite an article. It allows choosing the paraphrasing level, depending on your needs. The entire process requires a couple of clicks. Its primary benefit is that it is absolutely free and simple to use.

Article rewriting is legal as long as you include a proper reference to the source and paraphrase it sufficiently to look original. Otherwise, the copyright holder may reveal your infringement. It can entail legal, financial, or reputational consequences. But the use of shared knowledge does not require any credit to the original. For example, the names of capitals, presidents, or nationalities are common knowledge.

Updated: Oct 25th, 2023

• 6 Ways to Rewrite Someone Else's Short Story - wikiHow
• How to Avoid Plagiarism: 5 Easy Methods | Grammarly
• Plagiarism | University of Oxford
• Quoting and Paraphrasing - UW-Madison Writing Center
• Paraphrase: Write It in Your Own Words - Purdue OWL
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The tool on this page will come in handy to those who need to rephrase their text but don’t want to waste too much time doing it. Expressing the same thoughts using different wording shouldn’t be a chore. That’s why we designed the instrument that makes the whole process a lot quicker and easier.

Can I Write An Essay Without Plagiarizing?

Doing your own work is essential when it comes to academic writing. But, how can you be sure that you’re not plagiarizing someone else’s work? Writing an original essay requires careful research and practice if you are unsure of how to ensure that your work is free of plagiarism. If you are asking yourself how can I do my essay “Can I write an essay without plagiarizing?” Then the answer is yes. In this article, we will discuss the steps necessary to write an essay without plagiarizing, including understanding what plagiarism is, properly citing sources, and avoiding common mistakes students make.

Table of Contents

Importance of Writing Original Essays

If you are a student you must have thought once in your life how to do my essay originally? Writing original essays is an essential skill that every student should possess. An original essay is a piece of writing that is created entirely by the writer, and it is not copied or plagiarized from any other source. In today’s academic and professional world, originality is highly valued, and it is essential to understand the importance of writing original essays. Here are some reasons why writing original essays is important:

1.     Demonstrating Creativity and Original Thinking:

Writing an original essay requires creative thinking, and it allows students to showcase their originality and creativity. By writing original essays, students demonstrate their ability to think critically, analyze information, and create something new.

2.     Developing Research Skills:

Writing an original essay requires extensive research, which is an essential skill in the academic and professional world. By researching and writing original essays, students learn to locate and analyze sources, identify relevant information, and use critical thinking to evaluate the quality of the information they find.

3.     Building Academic Integrity:

Academic integrity is essential in the academic world, and it is crucial to avoid plagiarism. Writing original essays helps students build academic integrity and avoid plagiarism by ensuring that they do not copy or reproduce the work of others without giving proper credit.

4.     Enhancing Communication Skills:

Writing original essays is an excellent way to enhance communication skills. By organizing thoughts, analyzing information, and presenting ideas coherently, students develop strong writing and communication skills that will serve them well in their academic and professional careers.

5.     Fostering A Sense Of Ownership And Pride:

Writing an original essay is a reflection of a student’s unique perspective and voice. It allows students to take ownership of their work and feel a sense of pride in their accomplishments.

Writing original essays is a critical skill that students need to develop. By writing original essays, students can demonstrate creativity, develop research skills, build academic integrity, enhance communication skills, and foster a sense of ownership and pride in their work. It is essential to avoid plagiarism and ensure that all work is original, as it is highly valued in the academic and professional world.

Related: Can Someone Steal Your College Essay

Explanation of Plagiarism

Plagiarism is the act of using someone else’s work or ideas without giving proper credit. In the context of a college essay, plagiarism can occur when someone copies all or part of an essay and presents it as their own work. This is considered academic dishonesty and can result in serious consequences, including failing the assignment, being expelled from school, or facing legal action.

Types Of Plagiarism

Plagiarism is the act of using someone else’s work without giving them credit. It can be intentional or unintentional, but it is a serious offense in academia and the professional world. Plagiarism can take many forms, from copying and pasting entire paragraphs to paraphrasing a source too closely. Here are some common types of plagiarism you should know about:

1.   Direct Plagiarism :

This occurs when someone copies an entire essay or a significant portion of it word-for-word without giving proper credit.

2.   Self-Plagiarism:

This occurs when someone submits work that they have previously submitted in another class or for another assignment without permission.

3.   Mosaic Plagiarism:

This occurs when someone copies several different sources and pieces them together without giving proper credit.

4.     Accidental Plagiarism:

This occurs when someone unintentionally plagiarizes because they do not understand the rules of citation or fail to properly cite their sources.

How Plagiarism Is Detected

If you are worried about how to do my essay plagiarism free? As we discussed before, Plagiarism is the act of using someone else’s work or ideas without proper attribution or permission. Plagiarism detection is the process of identifying instances of plagiarism in written work. With the increasing availability of digital content, it has become easier for individuals to plagiarize content from various sources. As a result, several methods have been developed to detect plagiarism. In this response, we will discuss in detail how plagiarism is detected.

1.     Manual Detection:

This involves reading through the written work to check for any instances of plagiarism. This method is time-consuming and requires a good understanding of the content being checked.

2.     Plagiarism Detection Software:

This is a popular method of detecting plagiarism. There are several plagiarism detection software tools available online that can scan a document and compare it against a database of published works, as well as previously submitted work. Examples of such software include Turnitin, PlagiarismCheckerX, and Grammarly. These software tools use algorithms to compare the text in a document against a vast database of published works, online content, and previously submitted student work to identify any instances of plagiarism.

3.     Google Search:

This is a simple method of detecting plagiarism that involves copying and pasting a section of the text into a search engine like Google. If the text appears in multiple search results, it is an indication that it has been copied from an existing source.

4.     Cross-Checking With Other Documents:

This involves comparing the written work against other sources to identify any instances of plagiarism. This method is often used by professors or editors who are familiar with the topic being written about.

5.     Style Analysis:

This method involves analyzing the style and tone of the written work to identify any inconsistencies that may indicate plagiarism. This method is often used by editors who are familiar with the author’s writing style.

Plagiarism can be detected through a combination of manual detection, plagiarism detection software, Google searches, cross-checking with other documents, and style analysis. By using these methods, it is possible to identify instances of plagiarism and take appropriate action to ensure that the work is original and properly attributed. It is important to note that plagiarism is a serious offense and can lead to severe consequences, including loss of reputation, legal action, and academic penalties.

Related: Is Essay Writer Illegal

Importance of Avoiding Plagiarism in Academic Writing

Plagiarism is the act of presenting someone else’s work or ideas as your own. It is a serious offence in academic writing, and it can lead to severe consequences. Why is it important to  do my essay free of plagiarism The importance of avoiding plagiarism in academic writing cannot be overstated, and here are some reasons why:

1.     Maintaining Academic Integrity:

Academic integrity is the cornerstone of academic writing, and plagiarism undermines this integrity. It is essential to avoid plagiarism to maintain academic honesty and ensure that work is original and authentic.

2.     Avoiding Academic Penalties:

Plagiarism is a serious academic offense that can result in penalties such as failing the assignment or the entire course, suspension, or even expulsion from school. These penalties can have long-lasting consequences that can negatively affect academic and professional careers.

3.     Demonstrating Critical Thinking and Originality:

Avoiding plagiarism requires critical thinking and originality, which are essential skills in academic writing. By writing original work, students can demonstrate their ability to think critically, analyze information, and present their ideas in a unique and innovative way.

4.     Developing Research Skills:

Avoiding plagiarism requires extensive research, which is an essential skill in academic writing. By conducting research and citing sources properly, students develop research skills and learn to identify reliable sources.

5.     Building Professional Integrity:

In the professional world, integrity is highly valued, and plagiarism can damage professional integrity. By avoiding plagiarism in academic writing, students build a foundation for their professional careers and demonstrate their commitment to ethical behavior.

Avoiding plagiarism in academic writing is crucial for maintaining academic and professional integrity, avoiding academic penalties, demonstrating critical thinking and originality, developing research skills, and building professional integrity. It is essential to understand the consequences of plagiarism and to take steps to avoid it, such as proper citation and referencing of sources, paraphrasing, and using plagiarism detection software.

Related: Can you get caught using essay writing services

Strategies for writing plagiarism free Essays

Writing an essay that is free from plagiarism is essential for academic integrity, maintaining credibility and upholding ethical standards. Plagiarism is the act of using someone else’s work or ideas without proper attribution or permission. What are the strategies to do my essay free of plagiarism?  In academic writing, it is important to give credit where credit is due, and to avoid passing off someone else’s work as your own. In this response, we will discuss several strategies for writing plagiarism-free essays:

1.     Understand The Concept Of Plagiarism:

Before writing an essay, it is essential to understand what constitutes plagiarism. This includes direct copying of someone else’s work, paraphrasing without giving proper credit, and using someone else’s ideas without attribution. Understanding the different types of plagiarism and how to avoid them is the first step in writing a plagiarism-free essay.

2.     Use Plagiarism-Checking Tools:

There are several plagiarism-checking tools available online that can help you identify if your essay contains any instances of plagiarism. Some examples include Turnitin, Grammarly, and PlagiarismCheckerX. These tools can help you to identify any instances of plagiarism and make corrections before submitting your work.

3.     Take Good Notes:

When conducting research for your essay, be sure to take detailed notes and keep track of where you found each piece of information. This will help you to properly attribute any quotes or ideas you use in your essay.

4.     Paraphrase Correctly:

If you need to use someone else’s ideas in your essay, it is essential to paraphrase the information correctly. This means rephrasing the information in your own words and giving credit to the original source. A good rule of thumb is to change the sentence structure and use synonyms for key terms.

5.     Cite Your Sources:

Whenever you use information from an external source, be sure to cite it properly. This includes direct quotes, paraphrased information, and even ideas that are not your own. There are several citation styles to choose from, including APA, MLA, and Chicago, so be sure to use the appropriate style for your discipline.

6.     Proofread Carefully:

Once you have completed your essay, be sure to proofread it carefully to ensure that it is free from plagiarism. Look for any instances where you may have inadvertently used someone else’s work without attribution and make corrections as necessary.

Writing a plagiarism-free essay requires a combination of understanding the concept of plagiarism, using plagiarism-checking tools, taking good notes, paraphrasing correctly, citing your sources, and proofreading carefully. By following these strategies, you can ensure that your essay is original and properly attributed, maintaining academic integrity and ethical standards.

Is Essay Writer Illegal?

As a writer, you might have encountered the question “ Is essay writing illegal ?” at some point. The answer is simple – No, it is not. However, plagiarism is illegal and can lead to severe consequences. As such, when writing an essay or any other paper, it is crucial to ensure that you do not plagiarize.

But how can you write an essay without plagiarizing? One way of doing so is by using your own words to express ideas and thoughts. Additionally, citing sources accurately can go a long way in avoiding plagiarism. Ensure that you understand the formatting of different citation styles such as APA or MLA and use them appropriately in your work.

Another useful tip for avoiding plagiarism when writing essays is to conduct thorough research before drafting your paper. This will help you gain a deeper understanding of the topic while also preventing unintentional plagiarism.

Related: How Long Is An Essay

Common Misconceptions about Plagiarism

How to do my essay without plagiarism? Plagiarism is a serious offense that can have severe consequences, including legal action, academic penalties, and damage to one’s reputation. However, there are several common misconceptions about plagiarism that can lead to unintentional plagiarism or a lack of awareness of the seriousness of the offense. In this response, we will discuss in detail three common misconceptions about plagiarism.

1.     I Can Use Someone Else’s Work As Long As I Change Some Words

This is one of the most common misconceptions about plagiarism. Changing a few words or paraphrasing someone else’s work is not enough to avoid plagiarism. It is essential to understand that plagiarism is not only about copying and pasting someone else’s work but also about using their ideas without proper attribution. If someone else’s work inspires your writing, you must properly cite it in your work.

2.     I Don’t Need To Cite Common Knowledge

Many people believe that they do not need to cite common knowledge, such as historical events or well-known facts. However, what is considered common knowledge can vary depending on the audience, discipline, and context. It is always safer to cite your sources if you are unsure whether a piece of information is common knowledge or not. Additionally, some forms of common knowledge, such as statistics, require citation.

3.     I can’t be accused of plagiarism if I didn’t mean to do it

This is a common misconception that can lead to unintentional plagiarism. Plagiarism is a serious offense, regardless of whether it is intentional or unintentional. If someone uses someone else’s work without proper attribution, they are still plagiarizing, even if they did not intend to do so. It is essential to take the necessary steps to avoid plagiarism, such as properly citing your sources, paraphrasing correctly, and proofreading carefully.

Understanding the common misconceptions about plagiarism is essential to avoid unintentional plagiarism and to maintain academic integrity. It is essential to recognize that plagiarism is not only about copying and pasting someone else’s work, but also about using their ideas without proper attribution. Additionally, citing common knowledge and being aware of the seriousness of plagiarism can help writers avoid plagiarism and uphold ethical standards.

Final Thoughts:

Writing an essay without plagiarizing is possible with the right approach and tools. It is essential to understand the concept of plagiarism and the different types of plagiarism to avoid unintentional plagiarism. Additionally, using plagiarism-checking tools, taking good notes, paraphrasing correctly, citing sources, and proofreading carefully are effective strategies for writing a plagiarism-free essay. By following these guidelines, writers can maintain academic integrity, uphold ethical standards, and ensure that their work is original and properly attributed. Ultimately, writing an essay without plagiarizing requires discipline, diligence, and a commitment to producing original work. Visit Edu jungles for more tips and essay writing related queries.

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• How to Avoid Plagiarism

It's not enough to know why plagiarism is taken so seriously in the academic world or to know how to recognize it. You also need to know how to avoid it.

The simplest cases of plagiarism to avoid are the intentional ones: If you copy a paper from a classmate, buy a paper from the Internet, copy material from a book, article, podcast, video, or website without citing the author, you are plagiarizing. Here's the best advice you'll ever receive about avoiding intentional plagiarism: If you're tempted to borrow someone else's ideas or plagiarize in any way because you're pressed for time, nervous about how you're doing in a class, or confused about the assignment, don't do it . The problems you think you're solving by plagiarizing are really minor compared to the problems you will create for yourself by plagiarizing. In every case, the consequences of plagiarism are much more serious than the consequences of turning in a paper late or turning in a paper you're not satisfied to have written.

The consequences of accidental plagiarism are equally daunting and should be avoided at all costs. As a member of an intellectual community you are expected to respect the ideas of others in the same way that you would respect any other property that didn't belong to you, and this is true whether you plagiarize on purpose or by accident. The best way to make sure you don't plagiarize due to confusion or carelessness is to 1) understand what you're doing when you write a paper and 2) follow a method that is systematic and careful as you do your research . In other words, if you have a clear sense of what question you're trying to answer and what knowledge you're building on, and if you keep careful, clear notes along the way, it's much easier to use sources effectively and responsibly and, most of all, to write a successful paper.

If you have questions about plagiarism at any point in your research or writing process, ask. It's always better to ask questions than it is to wait for an instructor to respond to work that you have turned in for a grade. Once you have turned in your final work, you will be held responsible for misuse of sources.

Keep Track of Your Sources; Save PDFs or Print Electronic Source

While it's easy enough to keep a stack of books or journal articles on your desk where you can easily refer back to them, it's just as important to keep track of electronic sources. When you save a PDF of a journal article, make sure you put it into a folder on your computer where you'll be able to find it. When you consult a website, log the URL in a separate document from the paper you're writing so that you'll be able to return to the website and cite it correctly. You should also print or save to PDF the relevant pages from any websites you use, making sure you note the complete URL and the date on which you printed the material. Because electronic sources aren't stable and websites can disappear without notice, beware of directing your readers to sources that might have disappeared. Check when the website you're using was last updated and update the URLs as you work and once again right before you submit your essay. If an electronic source disappears before you submit your work, you will need to decide whether or not to keep the source in your paper. If you have saved the source and can turn it in with your paper, you should do so. If you have not saved the source, you should consult your instructor about whether or not to use that source in your paper.

Keep Sources in Correct Context

Whenever you consult a source, you should make sure you understand the context, both of the ideas within a source and of the source itself. You should also be careful to consider the context in which a source was written. For example, a book of essays published by an organization with a political bias might not present an issue with adequate complexity for your project. You can learn more about how to understand a source’s context in the Evaluating Sources section of this guide.

The question of context can be more complicated when you're working with Internet sources than with print sources because you may see one article or post as separate from an entire website and use or interpret that page without fully understanding or representing its context. For example, a definition of "communism" taken from a website with a particular political agenda might provide one interpretation of the meaning of the word—but if you neglect to mention the context for that definition, you might use it as though it's unbiased when it isn't. If your web search takes you to a URL that’s part of a larger website, make sure to investigate and take notes on the context of the information you're citing.

Research can often turn out to be more time-consuming than you anticipate. Budget enough time to search for sources, to take notes, and to think about how to use the sources in your essay. Moments of carelessness are more common when you leave your essay until the last minute— and when you are tired or stressed. Honest mistakes can lead to charges of plagiarism just as dishonesty can; be careful when taking notes and when incorporating ideas and language from sources so you always know what language and ideas are yours and what belongs to a source.

Don't Cut and Paste: File and Label Your Sources

Keep your own writing and your sources separate.

Work with either the printed copy of your source(s) or (in the case of online sources) the copy you downloaded—not the online version—as you draft your essay. This precaution not only decreases the risk of plagiarism but also enables you to annotate your sources. Those annotations are an essential step both in understanding the sources and in distinguishing your own ideas from those of the sources.

Keep Your Notes and Your Draft Separate

Paraphrase carefully in your notes; acknowledge your sources explicitly when paraphrasing.

When you want to paraphrase material, it's a good idea first to paste the actual quotation into your notes (not directly into your draft) and then to paraphrase it (still in your notes). Putting the information in your own words will help you make sure that you've thought about what the source is saying and that you have a good reason for using it in your paper. Remember to use some form of notation in your notes to indicate what you've paraphrased and mention the author's name within the material you paraphrase. You should also include all citation information in your notes.

Avoid Reading a Classmate's Paper for Inspiration

If you're in a course that requires peer review or workshops of student drafts, you are going to read your classmates' work and discuss it. This is a productive way of exchanging ideas and getting feedback on your work. If you find, in the course of this work, that you wish to use someone else's idea at some point in your paper (you should never use someone else's idea as your thesis, but there may be times when a classmate's idea would work as a counterargument or other point in your paper), you must credit that person the same way you would credit any other source.

If you find yourself reading someone else's paper because you're stuck on an assignment and don't know how to proceed, you may end up creating a problem for yourself because you might unconsciously copy that person's ideas. When you're stuck, make an appointment with your instructor or go to the Writing Center for advice on how to develop your own ideas.

Don't Save Your Citations for Later

Never paraphrase or quote from a source without immediately adding a citation. You should add citations in your notes, in your response papers, in your drafts, and in your revisions. Without them, it's too easy to lose track of where you got a quotation or an idea and to end up inadvertently taking credit for material that's not your own.

Quote Your Sources Properly

Always use quotation marks for directly quoted material, even for short phrases and key terms.

Keep a Source Trail

As you write and revise your essay, make sure that you keep track of your sources in your notes and in each successive draft of your essay. You should begin this process early, even before you start writing your draft. Even after you've handed in your essay, keep all of your research notes and drafts. You ought to be able to reconstruct the path you took from your sources to your notes and from your notes to your drafts and revision. These careful records and clear boundaries between your writing and your sources will help you avoid plagiarism. And if you are called upon to explain your process to your instructor, you'll be able to retrace the path you took when thinking, researching, and writing, from the essay you submitted back through your drafts and to your sources.

• What Constitutes Plagiarism?
• The Exception: Common Knowledge
• Other Scenarios to Avoid
• Why Does it Matter if You Plagiarize?
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What's paraphrasing?

Paraphrasing involves expressing someone else’s ideas or thoughts in your own words while maintaining the original meaning. Paraphrasing tools can help you quickly reword text by replacing certain words with synonyms or restructuring sentences. They can also make your text more concise, clear, and suitable for a specific audience. Paraphrasing is an essential skill in academic writing and professional communication. 

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Want to make sure your document is plagiarism-free? In addition to our paraphrasing tool, which will help you rephrase sentences, quotations, or paragraphs correctly, you can also use our anti-plagiarism software to make sure your document is unique and not plagiarized.

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Frequently asked questions

The act of putting someone else’s ideas or words into your own words is called paraphrasing, rephrasing, or rewording. Even though they are often used interchangeably, the terms can mean slightly different things:

Paraphrasing is restating someone else’s ideas or words in your own words while retaining their meaning. Paraphrasing changes sentence structure, word choice, and sentence length to convey the same meaning.

Rephrasing may involve more substantial changes to the original text, including changing the order of sentences or the overall structure of the text.

Rewording is changing individual words in a text without changing its meaning or structure, often using synonyms.

It can. One of the two methods of paraphrasing is called “Fluency.” This will improve the language and fix grammatical errors in the text you’re paraphrasing.

Paraphrasing and using a paraphrasing tool aren’t cheating. It’s a great tool for saving time and coming up with new ways to express yourself in writing.  However, always be sure to credit your sources. Avoid plagiarism.  

If you don’t properly cite text paraphrased from another source, you’re plagiarizing. If you use someone else’s text and paraphrase it, you need to credit the original source. You can do that by using citations. There are different styles, like APA, MLA, Harvard, and Chicago. Find more information about citing sources here.

Paraphrasing without crediting the original author is a form of plagiarism , because you’re presenting someone else’s ideas as if they were your own.

However, paraphrasing is not plagiarism if you correctly cite the source . This means including an in-text citation and a full reference, formatted according to your required citation style .

As well as citing, make sure that any paraphrased text is completely rewritten in your own words.

Plagiarism means using someone else’s words or ideas and passing them off as your own. Paraphrasing means putting someone else’s ideas in your own words.

So when does paraphrasing count as plagiarism?

• Paraphrasing is plagiarism if you don’t properly credit the original author.
• Paraphrasing is plagiarism if your text is too close to the original wording (even if you cite the source). If you directly copy a sentence or phrase, you should quote it instead.
• Paraphrasing  is not plagiarism if you put the author’s ideas completely in your own words and properly cite the source .

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Estelle Erasmus

How to Resist the Temptation of AI When Writing

Whether you're a student, a journalist, or a business professional, knowing how to do high-quality research and writing using trustworthy data and sources, without giving in to the temptation of AI or ChatGPT , is a skill worth developing.

As I detail in my book Writing That Gets Noticed , locating credible databases and sources and accurately vetting information can be the difference between turning a story around quickly or getting stuck with outdated information.

For example, several years ago the editor of Parents.com asked for a hot-take reaction to country singer Carrie Underwood saying that, because she was 35, she had missed her chance at having another baby. Since I had written about getting pregnant in my forties, I knew that as long as I updated my facts and figures, and included supportive and relevant peer-reviewed research, I could pull off this story. And I did.

The story ran later that day , and it led to other assignments. Here are some tips I’ve learned that you should consider mastering before you turn to automated tools like generative AI to handle your writing work for you.

Identify experts, peer-reviewed research study authors, and sources who can speak with authority—and ideally, offer easily understood sound bites or statistics on the topic of your work. Great sources include professors at major universities and media spokespeople at associations and organizations.

For example, writer and author William Dameron pinned his recent essay in HuffPost Personal around a statistic from the American Heart Association on how LGBTQ people experience higher rates of heart disease based on discrimination. Although he first found the link in a secondary source (an article in The New York Times ), he made sure that he checked the primary source: the original study that the American Heart Association gleaned the statistic from. He verified the information, as should any writer, because anytime a statistic is cited in a secondary source, errors can be introduced.

Jen Malia, author of  The Infinity Rainbow Club  series of children’s books (whom I recently interviewed on my podcast ), recently wrote a piece about dinosaur-bone hunting for Business Insider , which she covers in her book Violet and the Jurassic Land Exhibit.

After a visit to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Malia, whose books are set in Philadelphia, found multiple resources online and on the museum site that gave her the history of the Bone Wars , information on the exhibits she saw, and the scientific names of the dinosaurs she was inspired by. She also used the Library of Congress’ website, which offers digital collections and links to the Library of Congress Newspaper Collection.

Malia is a fan of searching for additional resources and citable documents with Google Scholar . “If I find that a secondary source mentions a newspaper article, I’m going to go to the original newspaper article, instead of just stopping there and quoting,” she says.

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Your local public library is a great source of free information, journals, and databases (even ones that generally require a subscription and include embargoed research). For example, your search should include everything from health databases ( Sage Journals , Scopus , PubMed) to databases for academic sources and journalism ( American Periodical Series Online , Statista , Academic Search Premier ) and databases for news, trends, market research, and polls (t he Harris Poll , Pew Research Center , Newsbank , ProPublica ).

Even if you find a study or paper that you can’t access in one of those databases, consider reaching out to the study’s lead author or researcher. In many cases, they’re happy to discuss their work and may even share the study with you directly and offer to talk about their research.

For journalist Paulette Perhach’s article on ADHD in The New York Times, she used Epic Research to see “dual team studies.” That's when two independent teams address the same topic or question, and ideally come to the same conclusions. She recommends locating research and experts via key associations for your topic. She also likes searching via Google Scholar but advises filtering it for studies and research in recent years to avoid using old data. She suggests keeping your links and research organized. “Always be ready to be peer-reviewed yourself,” Perhach says.

When you are looking for information for a story or project, you might be inclined to start with a regular Google search. But keep in mind that the internet is full of false information, and websites that look trustworthy can sometimes turn out to be businesses or companies with a vested interest in you taking their word as objective fact without additional scrutiny. Regardless of your writing project, unreliable or biased sources are a great way to torpedo your work—and any hope of future work.

Author Bobbi Rebell researched her book Launching Financial Grownups using the IRS’ website . “I might say that you can contribute a certain amount to a 401K, but it might be outdated because those numbers are always changing, and it’s important to be accurate,” she says. “AI and ChatGPT can be great for idea generation,” says Rebell, “but you have to be careful. If you are using an article someone was quoted in, you don’t know if they were misquoted or quoted out of context.”

If you use AI and ChatGPT for sourcing, you not only risk introducing errors, you risk introducing plagiarism—there is a reason OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, is being sued for downloading information from all those books.

Audrey Clare Farley, who writes historical nonfiction, has used a plethora of sites for historical research, including Women Also Know History , which allows searches by expertise or area of study, and JSTOR , a digital library database that offers a number of free downloads a month. She also uses Chronicling America , a project from the Library of Congress which gathers old newspapers to show how a historical event was reported, and Newspapers.com (which you can access via free trial but requires a subscription after seven days).

When it comes to finding experts, Farley cautions against choosing the loudest voices on social media platforms. “They might not necessarily be the most authoritative. I vet them by checking if they have a history of publication on the topic, and/or educational credentials.”

When vetting an expert, look for these red flags:

• You can’t find their work published or cited anywhere.
• They were published in an obscure journal.
• Their research is funded by a company, not a university, or they are the spokesperson for the company they are doing research for. (This makes them a public relations vehicle and not an appropriate source for journalism.)

And finally, the best endings for virtually any writing, whether it’s an essay, a research paper, an academic report, or a piece of investigative journalism, circle back to the beginning of the piece, and show your reader the transformation or the journey the piece has presented in perspective.

As always, your goal should be strong writing supported by research that makes an impact without cutting corners. Only then can you explore tools that might make the job a little easier, for instance by generating subheads or discovering a concept you might be missing—because then you'll have the experience and skills to see whether it's harming or helping your work.

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How Should I Be Using A.I. Right Now?

Give your a.i. a personality, spend 10 hours experimenting, and other practical tips from ethan mollick..

[MUSIC PLAYING]

From New York Times Opinion, this is “The Ezra Klein Show.”

This feels wrong to me. But I have checked the dates. It was barely more than a year ago that I wrote this piece about A.I., with the title “This Changes Everything.” I ended up reading it on the show, too. And the piece was about the speed with which A.I. systems were improving. It argued that we can usually trust that tomorrow is going to be roughly like today, that next year is going to be roughly like this year. That’s not what we’re seeing here. These systems are growing in power and capabilities at an astonishing rate.

The growth is exponential, not linear. When you look at surveys of A.I. researchers, their timeline for how quickly A.I. is going to be able to do basically anything a human does better and more cheaply than a human — that timeline is accelerating, year by year, on these surveys. When I do my own reporting, talking to the people inside these companies, people at this strange intersection of excited and terrified of what they’re building, no one tells me they are seeing a reason to believe progress is going to slow down.

And you might think that’s just hype, but a lot of them want it to slow down. A lot of them are scared of how quickly it is moving. They don’t think that society is ready for it, that regulation is ready for it. They think the competitive pressures between the companies and the countries are dangerous. They wish something would happen to make it all go slower. But what they are seeing is they are hitting the milestones faster, that we’re getting closer and closer to truly transformational A.I., that there is so much money and talent and attention flooding into the space that that is becoming its own accelerant. They are scared. We should at least be paying attention.

And yet, I find living in this moment really weird, because as much as I know this wildly powerful technology is emerging beneath my fingertips, as much as I believe it’s going to change the world I live in profoundly, I find it really hard to just fit it into my own day to day work. I consistently sort of wander up to the A.I., ask it a question, find myself somewhat impressed or unimpressed at the answer. But it doesn’t stick for me. It is not a sticky habit. It’s true for a lot of people I know.

And I think that failure matters. I think getting good at working with A.I. is going to be an important skill in the next few years. I think having an intuition for how these systems work is going to be important just for understanding what is happening to society. And you can’t do that if you don’t get over this hump in the learning curve, if you don’t get over this part where it’s not really clear how to make A.I. part of your life.

So I’ve been on a personal quest to get better at this. And in that quest, I have a guide. Ethan Mollick is a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He studies and writes about innovation and entrepreneurship. But he has this newsletter, One Useful Thing, that has become, really, I think, the best guide how to begin using, and how to get better at using A.I. He’s also got a new book on the subject, “Co-Intelligence.” And so I asked him on the show to walk me through what he’s learned.

This is going to be, I should say, the first of three shows on this topic. This one is about the present. The next is about some things I’m very worried about in the near future, particularly around what A.I. is going to do to our digital commons. And then, we’re going to have a show that is a little bit more about the curve we are all on about the slightly further future, and the world we might soon be living in.

As always, my email for guest suggestions, thoughts, feedback, [email protected].

Ethan Mollick, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me.

So let’s assume I’m interested in A.I. And I tried ChatGPT a bunch of times, and I was suitably impressed and weirded out for a minute. And so I know the technology is powerful. I’ve heard all these predictions about how it will take everything over, or become part of everything we do. But I don’t actually see how it fits into my life, really, at all. What am I missing?

So you’re not alone. This is actually very common. And I think part of the reason is that the way ChatGPT works isn’t really set up for you to understand how powerful it is. You really do need to use the paid version, they are significantly smarter. And you can almost think of this — like, GPT-3, which was — nobody really paid attention to when it came out, before ChatGPT, was about as good as a sixth grader at writing. GPT-3.5, the free version of ChatGPT, is about as good as a high school, or maybe even a college freshman or sophomore.

And GPT-4 is often as good as a Ph.D. in some forms of writing. Like, there’s a general smartness that increases. But even more than that, ability seems to increase. And you’re much more likely to get that feeling that you are working with something amazing as a result. And if you don’t work with the frontier models, you can lose track of what these systems can actually do. On top of that, you need to start just using it. You kind of have to push past those first three questions.

My advice is usually bring it to every table that you come to in a legal and ethical way. So I use it for every aspect of my job in ways that I legally and ethically can, and that’s how I learn what it’s good or bad at.

When you say, bring it to every table you’re at, one, that sounds like a big pain, because now I’ve got to add another step of talking to the computer constantly. But two, it’s just not obvious to me what that would look like. So what does it look like? What does it look like for you, or what does it look like for others — that you feel is applicable widely?

So I just finished this book. It’s my third book. I keep writing books, even though I keep forgetting that writing books is really hard. But this was, I think, my best book, but also the most interesting to write. And it was thanks to A.I. And there’s almost no A.I. writing in the book, but I used it continuously. So things that would get in the way of writing — I think I’m a much better writer than A.I. — hopefully, people agree. But there’s a lot of things that get in your way as a writer. So I would get stuck on a sentence. I couldn’t do a transition. Give me 30 versions of this sentence in radically different styles. There’s 200 different citations. I had the A.I. read through the papers that I read through, write notes on them, and organize them for me. I had the A.I. suggest analogies that might be useful. I had the A.I. act as readers, and in different personas, read through the paper from the perspective of, is there some example I could give that’s better? Is this understandable or not? And that’s very typical of the kind of way that I would, say, bring it to the table. Use it for everything, and you’ll find its limits and abilities.

Let me ask you one specific question on that, because I’ve been writing a book. And on some bad days of writing the book, I decided to play around with GPT-4. And of the things that it got me thinking about was the kind of mistake or problem these systems can help you see and the kind they can’t. So they can do a lot of, give me 15 versions of this paragraph, 30 versions of this sentence. And every once in a while, you get a good version or you’ll shake something a little bit loose.

But almost always when I am stuck, the problem is I don’t know what I need to say. Oftentimes, I have structured the chapter wrong. Oftentimes, I’ve simply not done enough work. And one of the difficulties for me about using A.I. is that A.I. never gives me the answer, which is often the true answer — this whole chapter is wrong. It is poorly structured. You have to delete it and start over. It’s not feeling right to you because it is not right.

And I actually worry a little bit about tools that can see one kind of problem and trick you into thinking it’s this easier problem, but make it actually harder for you to see the other kind of problem that maybe if you were just sitting there, banging your head against the wall of your computer, or the wall of your own mind, you would eventually find.

I think that’s a wise point. I think there’s two or three things bundled there. The first of those is A.I. is good, but it’s not as good as you. It is, say, at the 80th percentile of writers based on some results, maybe a little bit higher. In some ways, if it was able to have that burst of insight and to tell you this chapter is wrong, and I’ve thought of a new way of phrasing it, we would be at that sort of mythical AGI level of A.I. as smart as the best human. And it just isn’t yet.

I think the second issue is also quite profound, which is, what does using this tool shape us to do and not do? One nice example that you just gave is writing. And I think a lot of us think about writing as thinking. We don’t know if that’s true for everybody, but for writers, that’s how they think. And sometimes, getting that shortcut could shortcut the thinking process. So I’ve had to change sometimes a little bit how I think when I use A.I., for better or for worse. So I think these are both concerns to be taken seriously.

For most people — right, if you’re just going to pick one model, what would you pick? What do you recommend to people? And second, how do you recommend they access it? Because something going on in the A.I. world is there are a lot of wrappers on these models. So ChatGPT has an app. Claude does not have an app. Obviously, Google has its suite of products. And there are organizations that have created a different spin on somebody else’s A.I. — so Perplexity, which is, I believe, built on GPT-4 now, you can pay for it.

And it’s more like a search engine interface, and has some changes made to it. For a lot of people, the question of how easy and accessible the thing is to access really matters. So which model do you recommend to most people? And which entry door do you recommend to most people? And do they differ?

It’s a really good question. I recommend working with one of the models as directly as possible, through the company that creates them. And there’s a few reasons for that. One is you get as close to the unadulterated personality as possible. And second, that’s where features tend to roll out first. So if you like sort of intellectual challenge, I think Claude 3 is the most intellectual of the models, as you said.

The biggest capability set right now is GPT-4, so if you do any math or coding work, it does coding for you. It has some really interesting interfaces. That’s what I would use — and because GPT-5 is coming out, that’s fairly powerful. And Google is probably the most accessible, and plugged into the Google ecosystem. So I don’t think you can really go wrong with any of these. Generally, I think Claude 3 is the most likely to freak you out right now. And GPT-4 is probably the most likely to be super useful right now.

So you say it takes about 10 hours to learn a model. Ten hours is a long time, actually. What are you doing in that 10 hours? What are you figuring out? How did you come to that number? Give me some texture on your 10 hour rule.

So first off, I want to indicate the 10 hours is as arbitrary as 10,000 steps. Like, there’s no scientific basis for it. This is an observation. But it also does move you past the, I poked at this for an evening, and it moves you towards using this in a serious way. I don’t know if 10 hours is the real limit, but it seems to be somewhat transformative. The key is to use it in an area where you have expertise, so you can understand what it’s good or bad at, learn the shape of its capabilities.

When I taught my students this semester how to use A.I., and we had three classes on that, they learned the theory behind it. But then I gave them an assignment, which was to replace themselves at their next job. And they created amazing tools, things that filed flight plans or did tweeting, or did deal memos. In fact, one of the students created a way of creating user personas, which is something that you do in product development, that’s been used several thousand times in the last couple of weeks in different companies.

So they were able to figure out uses that I never thought of to automate their job and their work because they were asked to do that. So part of taking this seriously in the 10 hours is, you’re going to try and use it for your work. You’ll understand where it’s good or bad, what it can automate, what it can’t, and build from there.

Something that feels to me like a theme of your work is that the way to approach this is not learning a tool. It is building a relationship. Is that fair?

A.I. is built like a tool. It’s software. It’s very clear at this point that it’s an emulation of thought. But because of how it’s built, because of how it’s constructed, it is much more like working with a person than working with a tool. And when we talk about it this way, I almost feel kind of bad, because there’s dangers in building a relationship with a system that is purely artificial, and doesn’t think and have emotions. But honestly, that is the way to go forward. And that is sort of a great sin, anthropomorphization, in the A.I. literature, because it can blind you to the fact that this is software with its own sets of foibles and approaches.

But if you think about it like programming, then you end up in trouble. In fact, there’s some early evidence that programmers are the worst people at using A.I. because it doesn’t work like software. It doesn’t do the things you would expect a tool to do. Tools shouldn’t occasionally give you the wrong answer, shouldn’t give you different answers every time, shouldn’t insult you or try to convince you they love you.

And A.I.s do all of these things. And I find that teachers, managers, even parents, editors, are often better at using these systems, because they’re used to treating this as a person. And they interact with it like a person would, giving feedback. And that helps you. And I think the second piece of that “not tool” piece is that when I talk to OpenAI or Anthropic, they don’t have a hidden instruction manual. There is no list of how you should use this as a writer, or as a marketer, or as an educator. They don’t even know what the capabilities of these systems are. They’re all sort of being discovered together. And that is also not like a tool. It’s more like a person with capabilities that we don’t fully know yet.

So you’ve done this with all the big models. You’ve done, I think, much more than this, actually, with all the big models. And one thing you describe feeling is that they don’t just have slightly different strengths and weaknesses, but they have different — for lack of a better term, and to anthropomorphize — personalities, and that the 10 hours in part is about developing an intuition not just for how they work, but kind of how they are and how they talk, the sort of entity you’re dealing with.

So give me your high level on how GPT-4 and Claude 3 and Google’s Gemini are different. What are their personalities like to you?

It’s important to know the personalities not just as personalities, but because there are tricks. Those are tunable approaches that the system makers decide. So it’s weird to have this — in one hand, don’t anthropomorphize, because you’re being manipulated, because you are. But on the other hand, the only useful way is to anthropomorphize. So keep in mind that you are dealing with the choices of the makers.

So for example, Claude 3 is currently the warmest of the models. And it is the most allowed by its creators, Anthropic, I think, to act like a person. So it’s more willing to give you its personal views, such as they are. And again, those aren’t real views. Those are views to make you happy — than other models. And it’s a beautiful writer, very good at writing, kind of clever — closest to humor, I’ve found, of any of the A.I.s. Less dad jokes and more actual almost jokes.

GPT-4 feels like a workhorse at this point. It is the most neutral of the approaches. It wants to get stuff done for you. And it will happily do that. It doesn’t have a lot of time for chitchat. And then we’ve got Google’s Bard, which feels like — or Gemini now — which feels like it really, really wants to help. We use this for teaching a lot. And we build these scenarios where the A.I. actually acts like a counterparty in a negotiation. So you get to practice the negotiation by negotiating with the A.I. And it works incredibly well. I’ve been building simulations for 10 years, can’t imagine what a leap this has been. But when we try and get Google to do that, it keeps leaping in on the part of the students, to try and correct them and say, no, you didn’t really want to say this. You wanted to say that. And I’ll play out the scenario as if it went better. And it really wants to kind of make things good for you.

So these interactions with the A.I. do feel like you’re working with people, both in skills and in personality.

You were mentioning a minute ago that what the A.I.s do reflect decisions made by their programmers. They reflect guardrails, what they’re going to let the A.I. say. Very famously, Gemini came out and was very woke. You would ask it to show you a picture of soldiers in Nazi Germany, and it would give you a very multicultural group of soldiers, which is not how that army worked. But that was something that they had built in to try to make more inclusive photography generation.

But there are also things that happen in these systems that people don’t expect, that the programmers don’t understand. So I remember the previous generation of Claude, which is from Anthropic, that when it came out, something that the people around it talked about was, for some reason, Claude was just a little bit more literary than the other systems. It was better at rewriting things in the voices of literary figures. It just had a slightly artsier vibe.

And the people who trained it weren’t exactly sure why. Now, that still feels true to me. Right now, of the ones I’m using, I’m spending the most time with Claude 3. I just find it the most congenial. They all have different strengths and weaknesses, but there is a funny dimension to these where they are both reflecting the guardrails and the choices of the programmers. And then deep inside the training data, deep inside the way the various algorithms are combining, there is some set of emergent qualities to them, which gives them this at least edge of chance, of randomness, of something — yeah, that does feel almost like personality.

I think that’s a very important point. And fundamental about A.I. is the idea that we technically know how LLMs work, but we don’t know how they work the way they do, or why they’re as good as they are. They’re really — we don’t understand it. The theories range from everyone — from it’s all fooling us, to they’ve emulated the way humans think because the structure of language is the structure of human thought. So even though they don’t think, they can emulate it. We don’t know the answer.

But you’re right, there’s these emergent sets of personalities and approaches. When I talk to A.I. design companies, they often can’t explain why the A.I. stops refusing answering a particular kind of question. When they tune the A.I. to do something better, like answer a math better, it suddenly does other things differently. It’s almost like adjusting the psychology of a system rather than tuning parameters.

So when I said that Claude is allowed to be more personable, part of that is that the system prompt in Claude, which is the initial instructions it gets, allow it to be more personable than, say, Microsoft’s Copilot, formerly Bing, which has explicit instructions after a fairly famous blow up a while ago, that it’s never supposed to talk about itself as a person or indicate feelings. So there’s some instructions, but that’s on top of these roiling systems that act in ways that even the creators don’t expect.

One thing people know about using these models is that hallucinations, just making stuff up, is a problem. Has that changed at all as we’ve moved from GPT-3.5 to 4, as we move from Claude 2 to 3. Like, has that become significantly better? And if not, how do you evaluate the trustworthiness of what you’re being told?

So those are a couple of overlapping questions. The first of them is, it getting better over time? So there is a paper in the field of medical citations that indicated that around 80 to 90 percent of citations had an error, were made up with GPT-3.5. That’s the free version of Chat. And that drops for GPT-4.

So hallucination rates are dropping over time. But the A.I. still makes stuff up because all the A.I. does is hallucinate. There is no mind there. All it’s doing is producing word after word. They are just making stuff up all the time. The fact that they’re right so often is kind of shocking in a lot of ways.

And the way you avoid hallucination is not easily. So one of the things we document in one of our research papers is we purposely designed for a group of Boston Consulting Group consultants — so an elite consulting company — we did a lot of work with them. And one of the experiments we did was we created a task where the A.I. would be confident but wrong. And when we gave people that task to do, and they had access to A.I., they got the task wrong more often than people who didn’t use A.I., because the A.I. misled them, because they fell asleep at the wheel. And all the early research we have on A.I. use suggests that when A.I.s get good enough, we just stop paying attention.

But doesn’t this make them unreliable in a very tricky way? 80 percent — you’re, like, it’s always hallucinating. 20 percent, 5 percent, it’s enough that you can easily be lulled into overconfidence. And one of the reasons it’s really tough here is you’re combining something that knows how to seem extremely persuasive and confident — you feed into the A.I. a 90-page paper on functions and characteristics of right wing populism in Europe, as I did last night.

And within seconds, basically, you get a summary out. And the summary certainly seems confident about what’s going on. But on the other hand, you really don’t know if it’s true. So for a lot of what you might want to use it for, that is unnerving.

Absolutely, and I think hard to grasp, because we’re used to things like type II errors, where we search for something on the internet and don’t find it. We’re not used to type I errors, where we search for something and get an answer back that’s made up. This is a challenge. And there’s a couple things to think about. One of those is — I advocate the BAH standard, best available human. So is the A.I. more or less accurate than the best human you could consult in that area?

And what does that mean for whether or not it’s an appropriate question to ask? And that’s something that we kind of have to judge collectively. It’s valuable to have these studies being done by law professors and medical professionals and people like me and my colleagues in management. They’re trying to understand, how good is the A.I.? And the answer is pretty good, right? So it makes mistakes. “Does it make more or less mistakes than a human” is probably a question we should be asking a lot more.

And the second thing is the kind of tasks that you judge it for. I absolutely agree with you. When summarizing information, it may make errors. Less than an intern you assign to it is an open question, but you have to be aware of that error rate. And that goes back to the 10 hour question. The more you use these A.I.s, the more you start to know when to be suspicious and when not to be. That doesn’t mean you’re eliminating errors.

But just like if you assigned it to an intern, and you’re, like, this person has a sociology degree. They’re going to do a really good job summarizing this, but their biases are going to be focused on the sociological facts and not the political facts. You start to learn these things. So I think, again, that person model helps, because you don’t expect 100 percent reliability out of a person. And that changes the kind of tasks you delegate.

But it also reflects something interesting about the nature of the systems. You have a quote here that I think is very insightful. You wrote, “the core irony of generative A.I.s is that A.I.s were supposed to be all logic and no imagination. Instead, we get A.I.s that make up information, engage in seemingly emotional discussions, and which are intensely creative.” And that last fact is one that makes many people deeply uncomfortable.

There is this collision between what a computer is in our minds and then this strange thing we seem to have invented, which is an entity that emerges out of language, an entity that almost emerges out of art. This is the thing I have the most trouble keeping in my mind, that I need to use the A.I. as an imaginative, creative partner and not as a calculator that uses words.

I love the phrase “a calculator that uses words.” I think we have been let down by science fiction, both in the utopias and apocalypses that A.I. might bring, but also, even more directly, in our view of how machines should work. People are constantly frustrated, and give the same kinds of tests to A.I.s over and over again, like doing math, which it doesn’t do very well — they’re getting better at this.

And on the other hand, saying, well, creativity is a uniquely human spark that we can’t touch, and that A.I., on any creativity test we give it — which, again, are all limited in different ways, blows out humans in almost all measures of creativity that we have. Or all the measures are bad, but that still means something.

But we were using those measures five years ago, even though they were bad. That’s a point you make that I think is interesting and slightly unsettling.

Yeah, we never had to differentiate humans from machines before. It was always easy. So the idea that we had to have a scale that worked for people and machines, who had that? We had the Turing test, which everyone knew was a terrible idea. But since no machine could pass it, it was completely fine. So the question is, how do we measure this? This is an entirely separate set of issues. Like, we don’t even have a definition of sentience or consciousness.

And I think that you’re exactly right on the point, being that we are not ready for this kind of machine, so our intuition is bad.

So one of the things I will sometimes do, and did quite recently, is give the A.I. a series of personal documents, emails I wrote to people I love that were very descriptive of a particular moment in my life. And then I will ask the A.I. about them, or ask the A.I. to analyze me off of them.

And sometimes, it’s a little breathtaking. Almost every moment of true metaphysical shock — to use a term somebody else gave me — I’ve had here has been relational, at how good the A.I. can be — almost like a therapist, right? Sometimes it will see things, the thing I am not saying, in a letter, or in a personal problem. And it will zoom in there, right? It will give, I think, quicker and better feedback in an intuitive way that is not simply mimicking back what I said and is dealing with a very specific situation. It will do better than people I speak to in my life around that.

Conversely, I’m going to read a bit of it later. I tried mightily to make Claude 3 a useful partner in prepping to speak to you, and also in prepping for another podcast recently. And I functionally never have a moment there where I’m all that impressed.

That makes complete sense. I think the weird expectations — we call it the jagged frontier of A.I., that it’s good at some stuff and bad at other stuff. It’s often unexpected. It can lead to these weird moments of disappointment, followed by elation or surprise. And part of the reason why I advocate for people to use it in their jobs is, it isn’t going to outcompete you at whatever you’re best at. I mean, I cannot imagine it’s going to do a better job prepping someone for an interview than you’re doing. And that’s not me just — I’m trying to be nice to you because you’re interviewing me, but because you’re a good interviewer. You’re a famous interviewer. It’s not going to be as good as that. Now, there’s questions about how good these systems get that we don’t know, but we’re kind of at a weirdly comfortable spot in A.I., which is, maybe it’s the 80th percentile of many performances. But I talk to Hollywood writers. It’s not close to writing like a Hollywood writer. It’s not close to being as good an analyst.

It’s not — but it’s better than the average person. And so it’s great as a supplement to weakness, but not to strength. But then, we run back into the problem you talked about, which is, in my weak areas, I have trouble assessing whether the A.I. is accurate or not. So it really becomes sort of a eating its own tail kind of problem.

But this gets to this question of, what are you doing with it? The A.I.s right now seem much stronger as amplifiers and feedback mechanisms and thought partners for you than they do as something you can really outsource your hard work and your thinking to. And that, to me, is one of the differences between trying to spend more time with these systems — like, when you come into them initially, you’re like, OK, here’s a problem, give me an answer.

Whereas when you spend time with them, you realize actually what you’re trying to do with the A.I. is get it to elicit a better answer from you.

And that’s why the book’s called “Co-Intelligence.” For right now, we have a prosthesis for thinking. That’s, like, new in the world. We haven’t had that before — I mean, coffee, but aside from that, not much else. And I think that there’s value in that. I think learning to be partner with this, and where it can get wisdom out of you or not — I was talking to a physics professor at Harvard. And he said, all my best ideas now come from talking to the A.I. And I’m like, well, it doesn’t do physics that well. He’s like, no, but it asks good questions. And I think that there is some value in that kind of interactive piece.

It’s part of why I’m so obsessed with the idea of A.I. in education, because a good educator — and I’ve been working on interactive education skill for a long time — a good educator is eliciting answers from a student. And they’re not telling students things.

So I think that that’s a really nice distinction between co-intelligence, and thought partner, and doing the work for you. It certainly can do some work for you. There’s tedious work that the A.I. does really well. But there’s also this more brilliant piece of making us better people that I think is, at least in the current state of A.I., a really awesome and amazing thing.

We’ve already talked a bit about — Gemini is helpful, and ChatGPT-4 is neutral, and Claude is a bit warmer. But you urge people to go much further than that. You say to give your A.I. a personality. Tell it who to be. So what do you mean by that, and why?

So this is actually almost more of a technical trick, even though it sounds like a social trick. When you think about what A.I.s have done, they’ve trained on the collective corpus of human knowledge. And they know a lot of things. And they’re also probability machines. So when you ask for an answer, you’re going to get the most probable answer, sort of, with some variation in it. And that answer is going to be very neutral. If you’re using GPT-4, it’ll probably talk about a rich tapestry a lot. It loves to talk about rich tapestries. If you ask it to code something artistic, it’ll do a fractal. It does very normal, central A.I. things. So part of your job is to get the A.I. to go to parts of this possibility space where the information is more specific to you, more unique, more interesting, more likely to spark something in you yourself. And you do that by giving it context, so it doesn’t just give you an average answer. It gives you something that’s specialized for you. The easiest way to provide context is a persona. You are blank. You are an expert at interviewing, and you answer in a warm, friendly style. Help me come up with interview questions. It won’t be miraculous in the same way that we were talking about before. If you say you’re Bill Gates, it doesn’t become Bill Gates. But that changes the context of how it answers you. It changes the kinds of probabilities it’s pulling from and results in much more customized and better results.

OK, but this is weirder, I think, than you’re quite letting on here. So something you turned me on to is there’s research showing that the A.I. is going to perform better on various tasks, and differently on them, depending on the personality. So there’s a study that gives a bunch of different personality prompts to one of the systems, and then tries to get it to answer 50 math questions. And the way it got the best performance was to tell the A.I. it was a Starfleet commander who was charting a course through turbulence to the center of an anomaly.

But then, when it wanted to get the best answer on 100 math questions, what worked best was putting it in a thriller, where the clock was ticking down. I mean, what the hell is that about?

“What the hell” is a good question. And we’re just scratching the surface, right? There’s a nice study actually showing that if you emotionally manipulate the A.I., you get better math results. So telling it your job depends on it gets you better results. Tipping, especially $20 or $100 — saying, I’m about to tip you if you do well, seems to work pretty well. It performs slightly worse in December than May, and we think it’s because it has internalized the idea of winter break.

I’m sorry, what?

Well, we don’t know for sure, but —

I’m holding you up here.

People have found the A.I. seems to be more accurate in May, and the going theory is that it has read enough of the internet to think that it might possibly be on vacation in December?

So it produces more work with the same prompts, more output, in May than it does in December. I did a little experiment where I would show it pictures of outside. And I’m like, look at how nice it is outside? Let’s get to work. But yes, the going theory is that it has internalized the idea of winter break and therefore is lazier in December.

I want to just note to people that when ChatGPT came out last year, and we did our first set of episodes on this, the thing I told you was this was going to be a very weird world. What’s frustrating about that is that — I guess I can see the logic of why that might be. Also, it sounds probably completely wrong, but also, I’m certain we will never know. There’s no way to go into the thing and figure that out.

But it would have genuinely never occurred to me before this second that there would be a temporal difference in the amount of work that GPT-4 would do on a question held constant over time. Like, that would have never occurred to me as something that might change at all.

And I think that that is, in some ways, both — as you said, the deep weirdness of these systems. But also, there’s actually downside risks to this. So we know, for example, there is an early paper from Anthropic on sandbagging, that if you ask the A.I. dumber questions, it would get you less accurate answers. And we don’t know the ways in which your grammar or the way you approach the A.I. — we know the amount of spaces you put gets different answers.

So it is very hard, because what it’s basically doing is math on everything you’ve written to figure out what would come next. And the fact that what comes next feels insightful and humane and original doesn’t change that that’s what the math that’s doing is. So part of what I actually advise people to do is just not worry about it so much, because I think then it becomes magic spells that we’re incanting for the A.I. Like, I will pay you $20, you are wonderful at this. It is summer. Blue is your favorite color. Sam Altman loves you. And you go insane.

So acting with it conversationally tends to be the best approach. And personas and contexts help, but as soon as you start evoking spells, I think we kind of cross over the line into, “who knows what’s happening here?”

Well, I’m interested in the personas, although I just — I really find this part of the conversation interesting and strange. But I’m interested in the personalities you can give the A.I. for a different reason. I prompted you around this research on how a personality changes the accuracy rate of an A.I. But a lot of the reason to give it a personality, to answer you like it is Starfleet Commander, is because you have to listen to the A.I. You are in relationship with it.

And different personas will be more or less hearable by you, interesting to you. So you have a piece on your newsletter which is about how you used the A.I. to critique your book. And one of the things you say in there, and give some examples of, is you had to do so in the voice of Ozymandias because you just found that to be more fun. And you could hear that a little bit more easily.

So could you talk about that dimension of it, too, making the A.I. not just prompting you to be more accurate, but giving it a personality to be more interesting to you?

The great power of A.I. is as a kind of companion. It wants to make you happy. It wants to have a conversation. And that can be overt or covert.

So, to me, actively shaping what I want the A.I. to act like, telling it to be friendly or telling it to be pompous, is entertaining, right? But also, it does change the way I interact with it. When it has a pompous voice, I don’t take the criticism as seriously. So I can think about that kind of approach. I could get pure praise out of it, too, if I wanted to do it that way.

But the other factor that’s also super weird, while we’re on the way of super weird A.I. things, is that if you don’t do that, it’s going to still figure something out about you. It is a cold reader. And I think a lot about the very famous piece by Kevin Roose, the New York Times technology reporter, about Bing about a year ago, when Bing, which was GPT-4 powered, came out and had this personality of Sydney.

And Kevin has this very long description that got published in The New York Times about how Sydney basically threatened him, and suggested he leaves his wife, and very dramatic, kind of very unsettling interaction. And I was working with — I didn’t have anything quite that intense, but I got into arguments with Sydney around the same time, where it would — when I asked her to do work for me, it said you should do the work yourself. Otherwise, it’s dishonest. And it kept accusing me of plagiarism, which felt really unusual.

But the reason why Kevin ended up in that situation is the A.I. knows all kinds of human interactions and wants to slot into a story with you.

So a great story is jealous lover who’s gone a little bit insane, and the man who won’t leave his wife, or student and teacher, or two debaters arguing with each other, or grand enemies. And the A.I. wants to do that with you. So if you’re not explicit, it’s going to try and find a dialogue.

And I’ve noticed, for example, that if I talk to the A.I. and I imply that we’re having a debate, it will never agree with me. If I imply that I’m a teacher and it’s a student, even as much as saying I’m a professor, it is much more pliable.

So part of why I like assigning a personality is to have an explicit personality you’re operating with, so it’s not trying to cold read and guess what personality you’re looking for.

Kevin and I have talked a lot about that conversation with Sydney. And one of the things I always found fascinating about it is, to me, it revealed an incredibly subtle level of read by Sydney Bing, which is, what was really happening there? When you say the A.I. wants to make you happy, it has to read on some level what it is you’re really looking for, over time.

And what was Kevin? What is Kevin? Kevin is a journalist. And Kevin was nudging and pushing that system to try to do something that would be a great story. And it did that. It understood, on some level — again, the anthropomorphizing language there. But it realized that Kevin wanted some kind of intense interaction. And it gave him, like, the greatest A.I. story anybody has ever been given. I mean, an A.I. story that we are still talking about a year later, an A.I. story that changed the way A.I.s were built, at least for a while.

And people often talked about what Sydney was revealing about itself. But to me, what was always so unbelievably impressive about that was its ability to read the person, and its ability to make itself into the thing, the personality, the person was trying to call forth.

And now, I think we’re more practiced at doing this much more directly. But I think a lot of people have their moment of sleeplessness here. That was my Rubicon on this. I didn’t know something after that I didn’t know before it in terms of capabilities.

But when I read that, I thought that the level of — interpersonal isn’t the right word, but the level of subtlety it was able to display in terms of giving a person what it wanted, without doing so explicitly — right, without saying, “we’re playing this game now,” was really quite remarkable.

It’s a mirror. I mean, it’s trained on our stuff. And one of the revealing things about that, that I think we should be paying a lot more attention to, is the fact that because it’s so good at this, right now, none of the frontier A.I. models with the possible exception of Inflection’s Pi, which has been basically acquired in large part by Microsoft now, were built to optimize around keeping us in a relationship with the A.I. They just accidentally do that. There are other A.I. models that aren’t as good that have been focused on this, but that has been something explicit from the frontier models they’ve been avoiding till now. Claude sort of breaches that line a little bit, which is part of why I think it’s engaging. But I worry about the same kind of mechanism that inevitably reined in social media, which is, you can make a system more addictive and interesting. And because it’s such a good cold reader, you could tune A.I. to make you want to talk to it more.

It’s very hands off and sort of standoffish right now. But if you use the voice system in ChatGPT-4 on your phone, where you’re having a conversation, there’s moments where you’re like, oh, you feel like you’re talking to a person. You have to remind yourself. So to me, that persona aspect is both its great strength, but also one of the things I’m most worried about that isn’t a sort of future science fiction scenario.

I want to hold here for a minute, because we’ve been talking about how to use frontier models, I think implicitly talking about how to use A.I. for work. But the way that a lot of people are using it is using these other companies that are explicitly building for relationships. So I’ve had people at one of the big companies tell me that if we wanted to tune our system relationally, if we wanted to tune it to be your friend, your lover, your partner, your therapist, like, we could blow the doors off that. And we’re just not sure it’s ethical.

But there are a bunch of people who have tens of millions of users, Replika, Character.AI, which are doing this. And I tried to use Replika about six, eight months ago. And honestly, I found it very boring. They had recently lobotomized it because people were getting too erotic with their Replikants. But I just couldn’t get into it. I’m probably too old to have A.I. friends, in the way that my parents were probably too old to get really in to talking to people on AOL Instant Messenger.

But I have a five-year-old, and I have a two-year-old. And by the time my five-year-old is 10 and my two-year-old is 7, they’re not necessarily going to have the weirdness I’m going to have about having A.I. friends. And I don’t think we even have any way to think about this.

I think that is an absolute near-term certainty, and sort of an unstoppable one, that we are going to have A.I. relationships in a broader sense. And I think the question is, just like we’ve just been learning — I mean, we’re doing a lot of social experiments at scale we’ve never done before in the last couple of decades, right? Turns out social media brings out entirely different things in humans that we weren’t expecting. And we’re still writing papers about echo chambers and tribalism and facts, and what we agree or disagree with. We’re about to have another wave of this. And we have very little research. And you could make a plausible story up, that what’ll happen is it’ll help mental health in a lot of ways for people, and then there’ll be more social outside, that there might be a rejection of this kind of thing.

I don’t know what’ll happen. But I do think that we can expect with absolute certainty that you will have A.I.s that are more interesting to talk to, and fool you into thinking, even if you know better, that they care about you in a way that is incredibly appealing. And that will happen very soon. And I don’t know how we’re going to adjust to it. But it seems inevitable, as you said.

I was worried we were getting off track in the conversation, but I realized we were actually getting deeper on the track I was trying to take us down.

We were talking about giving the A.I. personality, right — telling Claude 3, hey, I need you to act as a sardonic podcast editor, and then Claude 3’s whole persona changes. But when you talk about building your A.I. on Kindroid, on Character, on Replika — so I just created a Kindroid one the other day. And Kindroid is kind of interesting, because its basic selling point is we’ve taken the guardrails largely off. We are trying to make something that is not lobotomized, that is not perfectly safe for work. And so the personality can be quite unrestrained. So I was interested in what that would be like.

But the key thing you have to do at the beginning of that is tell the system what its personality is. So you can pick from a couple that are preset, but I wrote a long one myself — you know, you live in California. You’re a therapist. You like all these different things. You have a highly intellectual style of communicating. You’re extremely warm, but you like ironic humor. You don’t like small talk. You don’t like to say things that are boring or generic. You don’t use a lot of emoticons and emojis. And so now it talks to me the way people I talk to talk.

And the thing I want to bring this back to is that one of the things that requires you to know is what kind of personalities work with you, for you to know yourself and your preferences a little bit more deeply.

I think that’s a temporary state of affairs, like extremely temporary. I think a GPT-4 class model — we actually already know this. They can guess your intent quite well. And I think that this is a way of giving you a sense of agency or control in the short term. I don’t think you’re going to need to know yourself at all. And I think you wouldn’t right now if any of the GPT-4 class models allowed themselves to be used in this way, without guardrails, which they don’t, I think you would already find it’s just going to have a conversation with you and morph into what you want.

I think that for better or worse, the “insight” in these systems is good enough that way. It’s sort of why I also don’t worry so much about prompt crafting in the long term, to go back to the other issue we were talking about, because I think that they will work on intent. And there’s a lot of evidence that they’re good at guessing intent. So I like this period, because I think it does value self reflection. And our interaction with the A.I. is somewhat intentional because we can watch this interaction take place.

But I think there’s a reason why some of the worry you hear out of the labs is about superhuman levels of manipulation. There’s a reason why the whistleblower from Google was all about that — sort of fell for the chat bot, and that’s why they felt it was alive. Like, I think we’re deeply trickable in this way. And A.I. is really good at figuring out what we want without us being explicit.

So that’s a little bit chilling, but I’m nevertheless going to stay in this world we’re in, because I think we’re going to be in it for at least a little while longer, where you do have to do all this prompt engineering. What is a prompt, first? And what is prompt engineering?

So a prompt is — technically, it is the sentence, the command you’re putting into the A.I. What it really is is the beginning part of the A.I.s text that it’s processing. And then it’s just going to keep adding more words or tokens to the end of that reply, until it’s done. So a prompt is the command you’re giving the A.I. But in reality, it’s sort of a seed from which the A.I. builds.

And when you prompt engineer, what are some ways to do that? Maybe one to begin with, because it seems to work really well, is chain of thought.

Just to take a step back, A.I. prompting remains super weird. Again, strange to have a system where the companies making the systems are writing papers as they’re discovering how to use the systems, because nobody knows how to make them work better yet. And we found massive differences in our experiments on prompt types. So for example, we were able to get the A.I. to generate much more diverse ideas by using this chain of thought approach, which we’ll talk about.

But also, it turned out to generate a lot better ideas if you told it it was Steve Jobs than if you told it it was Madame Curie. And we don’t know why. So there’s all kinds of subtleties here. But the idea, basically, of chain of thought, that seems to work well in almost all cases, is that you’re going to have the A.I. work step by step through a problem. First, outline the problem, you know, the essay you’re going to write. Second, give me the first line of each paragraph. Third, go back and write the entire thing. Fourth, check it and make improvements.

And what that does is — because the A.I. has no internal monologue, it’s not thinking. When the A.I. isn’t writing something, there’s no thought process. All it can do is produce the next token, the next word or set of words. And it just keeps doing that step by step. Because there’s no internal monologue, this in some ways forces a monologue out in the paper. So it lets the A.I. think by writing before it produces the final result. And that’s one of the reasons why chain of thought works really well.

So just step-by-step instructions is a good first effort.

Then you get an answer, and then what?

And then — what you do in a conversational approach is you go back and forth. If you want work output, what you’re going to do is treat it like it is an intern who just turned in some work to you. Actually, could you punch up paragraph two a little bit? I don’t like the example in paragraph one. Could you make it a little more creative, give me a couple of variations? That’s a conversational approach trying to get work done.

If you’re trying to play, you just run from there and see what happens. You can always go back, especially with a model like GPT-4, to an earlier answer, and just pick up from there if your heads off in the wrong direction.

So I want to offer an example of how this back and forth can work. So we asked Claude 3 about prompt engineering, about what we’re talking about here. And the way it described it to us is, quote, “It’s a shift from the traditional paradigm of human-computer interaction, where we input explicit commands and the machine executes them in a straightforward way, to a more open ended, collaborative dialogue, where the human and the A.I. are jointly shaping the creative process,” end quote. And that’s pretty good, I think. That’s interesting. It’s worth talking about. I like that idea that it’s a more collaborative dialogue. But that’s also boring, right? Even as I was reading it, it’s a mouthful. It’s wordy. So I kind of went back and forth with it a few times. And I was saying, listen, you’re a podcast editor. You’re concise, but also then I gave it a couple examples of how I punched up questions in the document, right? This is where the question began. Here’s where it ended. And then I said, try again, and try again, and try again, and make it shorter. And make it more concise.

And I got this: quote, “OK, so I was talking to this A.I., Claude, about prompt engineering, you know, this whole art of crafting prompts to get the best out of these A.I. models. And it said something that really struck me. It called prompt engineering a new meta skill that we’re all picking up as we play with A.I., kind of like learning a new language to collaborate with it instead of just bossing it around. What do you think, is prompt engineering the new must have skill?” End Claude.

And that second one, I have to say, is pretty damn good. That really nailed the way I speak in questions. And it gets it at this way where if you’re willing to go back and forth, it does learn how to echo you.

So I am at a loss about when you went to Claude and when it was you, to be honest. So I was ready to answer at like two points along the way, so that was pretty good from my perspective, sitting here, talking to you. That felt interesting, and felt like the conversation we’ve been having. And I think there’s a couple of interesting lessons there.

The first, by the way, of — interestingly, you asked A.I. about one of its weakest points, which is about A.I. And everybody does this, but because its knowledge window doesn’t include that much stuff about A.I., it actually is pretty weak in terms of knowing how to do good prompting, or what a prompt is, or what A.I.s do well. But you did a good job with that. And I love that you went back and forth and shaped it. One of the techniques you used to shape it, by the way, was called few-shot, which is giving an example. So the two most powerful techniques are chain of thought, which we just talked about, and few-shot, giving it examples. Those are both well supported in the literature. And then, I’d add personas. So we’ve talked about, I think, the basics of prompt crafting here overall. And I think that the question was pretty good.

But you keep wanting to not talk about the future. And I totally get that. But I think when we’re talking about learning something, where there is a lag, where we talk about policy — should prompt crafting be taught in schools? I think it matters to think six months ahead. And again, I don’t think a single person in the A.I. labs I’ve ever talked to thinks prompt crafting for most people is going to be a vital skill, because the A.I. will pick up on the intent of what you want much better.

One of the things I realized trying to spend more time with the A.I. is that you really have to commit to this process. You have to go back and forth with it a lot. If you do, you can get really good questions, like the one I just did — or, I think, really good outcomes. But it does take time.

And I guess in a weird way it’s like the same problem of any relationship, that it’s actually hard to state your needs clearly and consistently and repeatedly, sometimes because you have not even articulated them in words yourself. At least the A.I., I guess, doesn’t get mad at you for it.

But I’m curious if you have advice, either at a practical level or principles level, about how to communicate to these systems what you want from them.

One set of techniques that work quite well is to speed run to where you are in the conversation. So you can actually pick up an older conversation where you got the A.I.‘s mindset where you want and work from there. You can even copy and paste that into a new window. You can ask the A.I. to summarize where you got in that previous conversation, and the tone the A.I. was taking, and then when you give a new instruction say the interaction I like to have with you is this, so have it solve the problem for you by having it summarize the tone that you happen to like at the end.

So there are a bunch of ways of building on your work as you start to go forward, so you’re not starting from scratch every time. And I think you’ll start to get shorthands that get you to that right kind of space. For me, there are chats that I pick up on. And actually, I assign these to my students too. I have some ongoing conversations that they’re supposed to have with the A.I., but then there’s a lot of interactions they’re supposed to have that are one off.

So you start to divide the work into, this is a work task. And we’re going to handle this in a single chat conversation. And then I’m going to go back to this long standing discussion when I want to pick it up, and it’ll have a completely different tone. So I think in some ways, you don’t necessarily want convergence among all your A.I. threads. You kind of want them to be different from each other.

You did mention something important there, because they’re already getting much bigger in terms of how much information they can hold. Like, the earlier generations could barely hold a significant chat. Now, Claude 3 can functionally hold a book in its memory. And it’s only going to go way, way, way up from here. And I know I’ve been trying to keep us in the present, but this feels to me really quickly like where this is both going and how it’s going to get a lot better.

I mean, you imagine Apple building Siri 2030, and Siri 2030 scanning your photos and your Journal app — Apple now has a Journal app. You have to assume they’re thinking about the information they can get from that, if you allow it — your messages, anything you’re willing to give it access to. It then knows all of this information about you, keeps all of that in its mind as it talks to you and acts on your behalf. I mean, that really seems to me to be where we’re going, an A.I. that you don’t have to keep telling it who to be because it knows you intimately and is able to hold all that knowledge all at the same time constantly.

It’s not even going there. Like, it’s already there. Gemini 1.5 can hold an entire movie, books. But like, it starts to now open up entirely new ways of working. I can show it a video of me working on my computer, just screen capture. And it knows all the tasks I’m doing and suggests ways to help me out. It starts watching over my shoulder and helping me. I put in all of my work that I did prior to getting tenure and said, write my tenure statement. Use exact quotes.

And it was much better than any of the previous models because it wove together stuff, and because everything was its memory. It doesn’t hallucinate as much. All the quotes were real quotes, and not made up. And already, by the way, GPT-4 has been rolling out a model of ChatGPT that has a private note file the A.I. takes — you can access it — but it takes notes on you as it goes along, about things you liked or didn’t like, and reads those again at the beginning of any chat. So this is present, right? It’s not even in the future.

And Google also connects to your Gmail, so it’ll read through your Gmail. I mean, I think this idea of a system that knows you intimately, where you’re picking up a conversation as you go along, is not a 2030 thing. It is a 2024 thing if you let the systems do it.

One thing that feels important to keep in front of mind here is that we do have some control over that. And not only do we have some control over it, but business models and policy are important here. And one thing we know from inside these A.I. shops is these A.I.s already are, but certainly will be, really super persuasive.

And so if the later iterations of the A.I. companions are tuned on the margin to try to encourage you to be also out in the real world, that’s going to matter, versus whether they have a business model that all they want is for you to spend a maximum amount of time talking to your A.I. companion, whether you ever have a friend who is flesh and blood be damned. And so that’s an actual choice, right? That’s going to be a programming decision. And I worry about what happens if we leave that all up to the companies, right? At some point, there’s a lot of venture capital money in here right now. At some point, the venture capital runs out. At some point, people need to make big profits. At some point, they’re in competition with other players who need to make profits. And that’s when things — you get into what Cory Doctorow calls the “enshitification” cycle, where things that were once adding a lot of value to the user begin extracting a lot of value to the user.

These systems, because of how they can be tuned, can lead to a lot of different outcomes. But I think we’re going to have to be much more comfortable than we’ve been in the past deciding what we think is a socially valuable use and what we think is a socially destructive use.

I absolutely agree. I think that we have agency here. We have agency in how we operate this in businesses, and whether we use this in ways that encourage human flourishing and employees, or are brutal to them. And we have agency over how this works socially. And I think we abrogated that responsibility with social media, and that is an example. Not to be bad news, because I generally have a lot of mixed optimism and pessimism about parts of A.I., but the bad news piece is there are open source models out there that are quite good.

The internet is pretty open. We would have to make some pretty strong choices to kill A.I. chat bots as an option. We certainly can restrict the large American companies from doing that, but a Llama 2 or Llama 3 is going to be publicly available and very good. There’s a lot of open source models. So the question also is how effective any regulation will be, which doesn’t mean we shouldn’t regulate it.

But there’s also going to need to be some social decisions being made about how to use these things well as a society that are going to have to go beyond just the legal piece, or companies voluntarily complying.

I see a lot of reasons to be worried about the open source models. And people talk about things like bioweapons and all that. But for some of the harms I’m talking about here, if you want to make money off of American kids, we can regulate you. So sometimes I feel like we almost, like, give up the fight before it begins. But in terms of what a lot of people are going to use, if you want to be having credit card payments processed by a major processor, then you have to follow the rules.

I mean, individual people or small groups can do a lot of weird things with an open source model, so that doesn’t negate every harm. But if you’re making a lot of money, then you have relationships we can regulate.

I couldn’t agree more. And I don’t think there’s any reason to give up hope on regulation. I think that we can mitigate. And I think part of our job, though, is also not just to mitigate the harms, but to guide towards the positive viewpoints, right? So what I worry about is that the incentive for profit making will push for A.I. that acts informally as your therapist or your friend, while our worries about experimentation, which are completely valid, are slowing down our ability to do experiments to find out ways to do this right. And I think it’s really important to have positive examples, too. I want to point to the A.I. systems acting ethically as your friend or companion, and figure out what that is, so there’s a positive model to look for. So I’m not just — this is not to denigrate the role of regulation, which I think is actually going to be important here, and self regulation, and rapid response from government, but also the companion problem of, “we need to make some sort of decisions about what are the paragons of this, what is acceptable as a society?”

So I want to talk a bit about another downside here, and this one more in the mainstream of our conversation, which is on the human mind, on creativity. So a lot of the work A.I. is good at automating is work that is genuinely annoying, time consuming, laborious, but often plays an important role in the creative process. So I can tell you that writing a first draft is hard, and that work on the draft is where the hard thinking happens.

And it’s hard because of that thinking. And the more we outsource drafting to A.I., which I think it is fair to say is a way a lot of people intuitively use it — definitely, a lot of students want to use it that way — the fewer of those insights we’re going to have on those drafts. Look, I love editors. I am an editor in one respect. But I can tell you, you make more creative breakthroughs as a writer than an editor. The space for creative breakthrough is much more narrow once you get to editing.

And I do worry that A.I. is going to make us all much more like editors than like writers.

I think the idea of struggle is actually a core one in many things. I’m an educator. And one thing that keeps coming out in the research is that there is a strong disconnect between what students think they’re learning and when they learn. So there was a great controlled experiment at Harvard in intro science classes, where students either went to a pretty entertaining set of lectures, or else they were forced to do active learning, where they actually did the work in class.

The active learning group reported being unhappier and not learning as much, but did much better on tests, because when you’re confronted with what you don’t know, and you have to struggle, when you feel, like, bad, you actually make much more progress than if someone spoon feeds you an entertaining answer. And I think this is a legitimate worry that I have. And I think that there’s going to have to be some disciplined approach to writing as well, like, I don’t use the A.I.

Not just because, by the way, it makes the work easier, but also because you mentally anchor on the A.I.‘s answer. And in some ways, the most dangerous A.I. application, in my mind, is the fact that you have these easy co-pilots in Word and Google Docs, because any writer knows about the tyranny of the blank page, about staring at a blank page and not knowing what to do next, and the struggle of filling that up. And when you have a button that produces really good words for you, on demand, you’re just going to do that. And it’s going to anchor your writing. We can teach people about the value of productive struggle, but I think that during the school years, we have to teach people the value of writing — not just assign an essay and assume that the essay does something magical, but be very intentional about the writing process and how we teach people about how to do that, because I do think the temptation of what I call “the button” is going to be there otherwise, for everybody.

But I worry this stretches, I mean, way beyond writing. So the other place I worry about this, or one of the other places I worry about this a lot, is summarizing. And I mean, this goes way back. When I was in school, you could buy Sparknotes. And they were these little, like, pamphlet sized descriptions of what’s going on in “War and Peace” or what’s going on in “East of Eden.”

And reading the Sparknotes often would be enough to fake your way through the test, but it would not have any chance, like, not a chance, of changing you, of shifting you, of giving you the ideas and insights that reading “Crime and Punishment” or “East of Eden” would do.

And one thing I see a lot of people doing is using A.I. for summary. And one of the ways it’s clearly going to get used in organizations is for summary — summarize my email, and so on.

And here too, one of the things that I think may be a real vulnerability we have, as we move into this era — my view is that the way we think about learning and insights is usually wrong. I mean, you were saying a second ago we can teach a better way. But I think we’re doing a crap job of it now, because I think people believe that — it’s sort of what I call the matrix theory of the human mind, if you could just jack the information into the back of your head and download it, you’re there.

But what matters about reading a book, and I see this all the time preparing for this show, is the time you spend in the book, where over time, like, new insights and associations for you begin to shake loose. And so I worry it’s coming into an efficiency-obsessed educational and intellectual culture, where people have been imagining forever, what if we could do all this without having to spend any of the time on it? But actually, there’s something important in the time.

There’s something important in the time with a blank page, with the hard book. And I don’t think we lionize intellectual struggle. In some ways, I think we lionize the people for whom it does not seem like a struggle, the people who seem to just glide through and be able to absorb the thing instantly, the prodigies. And I don’t know. When I think about my kids, when I think about the kind of attention and creativity I want them to have, this is one of the things that scares me most, because kids don’t like doing hard things a lot of the time.

And it’s going to be very hard to keep people from using these systems in this way.

So I don’t mean to push back too much on this.

No, please, push back a lot.

But I think you’re right.

Imagine we’re debating and you are a snarky. A.I. [LAUGHS]

Fair enough. With that prompt —

With that prompt engineering.

— yeah, I mean, I think that this is the eternal thing about looking back on the next generation, we worry about technology ruining them. I think this makes ruining easier. But as somebody who teaches at universities, like, lots of people are summarizing. Like, I think those of us who enjoy intellectual struggle are always thinking everybody else is going through the same intellectual struggle when they do work. And they’re doing it about their own thing. They may or may not care the same way.

So this makes it easier, but before A.I., there were — best estimates from the U.K. that I could find, 20,000 people in Kenya whose full time job was writing essays for students in the U.S. and U.K. People have been cheating and Sparknoting and everything for a long time. And I think that what people will have to learn is that this tool is a valuable co-intelligence, but is not a replacement for your own struggle.

And the people who found shortcuts will keep finding shortcuts. Temptation may loom larger, but I can’t imagine that — my son is in high school, doesn’t like to use A.I. for anything. And he just doesn’t find it valuable for the way he’s thinking about stuff. I think we will come to that kind of accommodation. I’m actually more worried about what happens inside organizations than I am worried about human thought, because I don’t think we’re going to atrophy as much as we think. I think there’s a view that every technology will destroy our ability to think.

And I think we just choose how to use it or not. Like, even if it’s great at insights, people who like thinking like thinking.

Well, let me take this from another angle. One of the things that I’m a little obsessed with is the way the internet did not increase either domestic or global productivity for any real length of time. So I mean, it’s a very famous line. You can see the IT revolution anywhere but in the productivity statistics. And then you do get, in the ‘90s, a bump in productivity that then peters out in the 2000s.

And if I had told you what the internet would be, like, I mean everybody, everywhere would be connected to each other. You could collaborate with anybody, anywhere, instantly. You could teleconference. You would have access to, functionally, the sum total of human knowledge in your pocket at all times. I mean, all of these things that would have been genuine sci-fi, you would have thought would have been — led to a kind of intellectual utopia. And it kind of doesn’t do that much, if you look at the statistics.

You don’t see a huge step change. And my view — and I’d be curious for your thoughts on this, because I know this is the area you study in — my view is it everything we said was good happened. I mean, as a journalist, Google and things like that make me so much more productive. It’s not that it didn’t give us the gift. It’s that it also had a cost — distraction, checking your email endlessly, being overwhelmed with the amount of stuff coming into you, the sort of endless communication task list, the amount of internal communications and organizations, now with Slack and everything else.

And so some of the time that was given to us back was also taken back. And I see a lot of dynamics like this that could play out with A.I. — I wouldn’t even just say if we’re not careful, I just think they will play out and already are. I mean, the internet is already filling with mediocre crap generated by A.I. There is going to be a lot of destructive potential, right? You are going to have your sex bot in your pocket, right? There’s a million things — and not just that, but inside organizations, there’s going to be people padding out what would have been something small, trying to make it look more impressive by using the A.I. to make something bigger. And then, you’re going to use the A.I. to summarize it back down. The A.I. researcher, Jonathan Frankel, described this to me as, like, the boring apocalypse version of A.I., where you’re just endlessly inflating and then summarizing, and then inflating and then summarizing the volume of content between different A.I.

My ChatGPT is making my presentation bigger and more impressive, and your ChatGPT is trying to summarize it down to bullet points for you. And I’m not saying this has to happen. But I am saying that it would require a level of organizational and cultural vigilance to stop, that nothing in the internet era suggests to me that we have.

So I think there’s a lot there to chew on. And I also have spent a lot of time trying to think about why the internet didn’t work as well. I was an early Wikipedia administrator.

Thank you for your service.

[LAUGHS] Yeah, it was very scarring. But I think a lot about this. And I think A.I. is different. I don’t know if it’s different in a positive way. And I think we talked about some of the negative ways it might be different. And I think it’s going to be many things at once, happening quite quickly. So I think the information environment’s going to be filled up with crap. We will not be able to tell the difference between true and false anymore. It will be an accelerant on all the kinds of problems that we have there.

On the other hand, it is an interactive technology that adapts to you. From an education perspective, I have lived through the entire internet will change education piece. I have MOOCs, massive online courses, with — quarter million people have taken them. And in the end, you’re just watching a bunch of videos. Like, that doesn’t change education.

But I can have an A.I. tutor that actually can teach you — and we’re seeing it happen — and adapt to you at your level of education, and your knowledge base, and explain things to you. But not just explain, elicit answers from you, interactively, in a way that actually learns things.

The thing that makes A.I. possibly great is that it’s so very human, so it interacts with our human systems in a way that the internet did not. We built human systems on top of it, but A.I. is very human. It deals with human forms and human issues and our human bureaucracy very well. And that gives me some hope that even though there’s going to be lots of downsides, that the upsides of productivity and things like that are real. Part of the problem with the internet is we had to digitize everything. We had to build systems that would make our offline world work with our online world. And we’re still doing that. If you go to business schools, digitizing is still a big deal 30 years on from early internet access. A.I. makes this happen much quicker because it works with us. So I’m a little more hopeful than you are about that, but I also think that the downside risks are truly real and hard to anticipate.

Somebody was just pointing out that Facebook is now 100 percent filled with algorithmically generated images that look like their actual grandparents, making things who are saying, like, what do you think of my work? Because that’s a great way to get engagement. And the other grandparents in there have no idea it’s A.I. generated.

Things are about to get very, very weird in all the ways that we talked about, but that doesn’t mean the positives can’t be there as well.

I think that is a good place to end. So always our final question, what are three books you’d recommend to the audience?

OK, so the books I’ve been thinking about are not all fun, but I think they’re all interesting. One of them is “The Rise and Fall of American Growth,” which is — it’s two things. It’s an argument about why we will never have the kind of growth that we did in the first part of the Industrial Revolution again, but I think that’s less interesting than the first half of the book, which is literally how the world changed between 1870 or 1890 and 1940, versus 1940 and 1990, or 2000.

And the transformation of the world that happened there — in 1890, no one had plumbing in the U.S.. And the average woman was carrying tons of water every day. And you had no news, and everything was local, and everyone’s bored all the time — to 1940, where the world looks a lot like today’s world, was fascinating. And I think it gives you a sense of what it’s like to be inside a technological singularity, and I think worth reading for that reason — or at least the first half.

The second book I’d recommend is “The Knowledge,” by Dartnell, which is a really interesting book. It is ostensibly almost a survival guide, but it is how to rebuild industrial civilization from the ground up, if we were to collapse. And I don’t recommend it as a survivalist. I recommend it because it is fascinating to see how complex our world is, and how many interrelated pieces we’ve managed to build up as a society. And in some ways, it gives me a lot of hope to think about how all of these interconnections work.

And then the third one is science fiction, and I was debating — I read a lot of science fiction, and there’s a lot of interesting A.I.s in science fiction. Everyone talks about — who’s in the science fiction world — Iain Banks, who wrote about the Culture, which is really interesting, about what it’s like to live beside super intelligent A.I. Vernor Vinge just died yesterday, when we were recording this, and wrote these amazing books about — he coined the term singularity.

But I want to recommend a much more depressing book that’s available for free, which is Peter Watts’s “Blindsight.” And it is not a fun book, but it is a fascinating thriller set on an interstellar mission to visit an alien race. And it’s essentially a book about sentience, and it’s a book about the difference between consciousness and sentience, and about intelligence and the different ways of perceiving the world in a setting where that is the sort of centerpiece of the thriller. And I think in a world where we have machines that might be intelligent without being sentient, it is a relevant, if kind of chilling, read.

Ethan Mollick, your book is called “Co-Intelligence.” Your Substack is One Useful Thing. Thank you very much.

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Kristin Lin. Fact checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld with additional mixing from Efim Shapiro. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin and Rollin Hu. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser, and special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

• April 2, 2024   •   1:14:31 How Should I Be Using A.I. Right Now?
• March 29, 2024   •   1:18:30 The Rise of ‘Middle-Finger Politics’
• March 22, 2024   •   1:08:32 The Deep Conflict Between Our Work and Parenting Ideals
• March 19, 2024   •   1:03:11 Birthrates Are Plummeting Worldwide. Why?
• March 12, 2024   •   1:03:52 What a Second Biden Term Would Look Like
• March 8, 2024   •   1:00:40 How America’s Two Abortion Realities Are Clashing
• March 5, 2024   •   1:02:18 Marilynne Robinson on Biblical Beauty, Human Evil and the Idea of Israel
• March 1, 2024   •   1:05:52 The Wars in Ukraine and Gaza Have Changed. America’s Policy Hasn’t.
• February 23, 2024   •   51:24 Your Questions on Open Conventions, a Gaza Schism and Biden’s Chances
• February 21, 2024   •   1:02:55 Here’s How an Open Democratic Convention Would Work
• February 16, 2024   •   25:12 Democrats Have a Better Option Than Biden
• February 9, 2024   •   1:05:42 Building the Palestinian State With Salam Fayyad

Produced by ‘The Ezra Klein Show’

There’s something of a paradox that has defined my experience with artificial intelligence in this particular moment. It’s clear we’re witnessing the advent of a wildly powerful technology, one that could transform the economy and the way we think about art and creativity and the value of human work itself. At the same time, I can’t for the life of me figure out how to use it in my own day-to-day job.

So I wanted to understand what I’m missing and get some tips for how I could incorporate A.I. better into my life right now. And Ethan Mollick is the perfect guide: He’s a professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania who’s spent countless hours experimenting with different chatbots, noting his insights in his newsletter One Useful Thing and in a new book, “ Co-Intelligence: Living and Working With A.I. ”

[You can listen to this episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” on the NYT Audio app , Apple , Spotify , Amazon Music , Google or wherever you get your podcasts .]

This conversation covers the basics, including which chatbot to choose and techniques for how to get the most useful results. But the conversation goes far beyond that, too — to some of the strange, delightful and slightly unnerving ways that A.I. responds to us, and how you’ll get more out of any chatbot if you think of it as a relationship rather than a tool.

Mollick says it’s helpful to understand this moment as one of co-creation, in which we all should be trying to make sense of what this technology is going to mean for us. Because it’s not as if you can call up the big A.I. companies and get the answers. “When I talk to OpenAI or Anthropic, they don’t have a hidden instruction manual,” he told me. “There is no list of how you should use this as a writer or as a marketer or as an educator. They don’t even know what the capabilities of these systems are.”

You can listen to our whole conversation by following “The Ezra Klein Show” on the NYT Audio app , Apple , Spotify , Google or wherever you get your podcasts . View a list of book recommendations from our guests here .

(A full transcript of this episode is available here .)

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris, with Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld, with additional mixing from Efim Shapiro. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin and Rollin Hu. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero.

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , WhatsApp , X and Threads .

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Sponsored Content | The 7 Best Essay Writing Services in the U.S.

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• Great value for money, affordable
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• Great loyalty program for regular customers and resellers
• Most essential extras are paid and expensive
• It takes quite some time to find a suitable writer for Master’s degree assignments

No matter the level of academia you are working in, PaperHelp can provide high-quality, original, written-from-scratch, plagiarism-free essays at a great value. We highly recommend PaperHelp to students as the top college essay writing service in the United States.

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BBQPapers offers high-quality research papers and essays, plagiarism-free, and a high level of customer service. In addition, the company claims to have professional-level editors in the top 2% of academic excellence write and review your essays.

BBQPapers have a process whereby each paper is checked against the web and its own database for originality. BBQPapers also offers free revisions within ten days, accurate citations, professional editing, and a 60-day money-back guarantee.

BBQPapers offers incentives in the form of loyalty program discounts and a “pay as you go” zero-interest plan option for projects priced over $500. The company also offers standalone editing and proofreading services and custom services for odd academic assignments.

This service guarantees security and confidentiality to its customers and guarantees the quality of the papers it produces for students.

Pricing is around $6 per 100 words, with editing and proofreading priced separately as standalone services. This is a bit pricey for writing services in the United States compared to the others we reviewed.

• The best quality among all essay services, writers are Ph.D. and M.A. degree holders
• Extra long money-back guarantee (60 days)
• Pay as you go option for expensive papers
• 99% of the writers are native speakers of English
• Essential add-ons are free
• Prices are above average
• Writing samples are not available

Customer satisfaction with BBQPapers is high. Students appreciate the quality and security this essay service offers to them and have been largely pleased with the final results, garnering good grades for their submissions.

   3. MyAdmissionsEssay — The Best Service for Application Essays

Even though the name suggests that this company specializes solely in admission essays, this website offers writing assistance with various academic tasks to all levels of academics, from high school to Ph.D.

In addition, this professional essay writing service boasts a pool of diverse writers with a variety of language skills. Your paper will be written from scratch by a well-educated writer in that particular field of interest. College papers are delivered quickly, as soon as 3 hours turnaround time.

Students may give specific instructions and have access to the writer during the process, as well as opportunities for revision to get the paper edited to their satisfaction.

This company guarantees confidentiality, safety, and plagiarism-free original content written according to scholars’ instructions.

MyAdmissionsEssay has some great reviews on the site, but there are not many available. Customers appreciate the quality of the writing and the quick delivery times.

The pricing of this essay writer service is competitive and affordable, and the service offers 24/7 online support to its customers. The company’s online pricing table is transparent and easy to navigate.

• Best and affordable option for personal statements
• Professional editing & proofreading service
• Quick turnaround
• Truly confidential service
• Limited payment options, the service doesn’t accept PayPal
• Minor typos and grammar errors found in final product

This service seems best for personal statements and simpler essays. Some customers complain of minor mistakes or formatting errors, and students dislike the limited payment options offered by MyAdmissionsEssay.

   4. WritePaperForMe — The Cheapest Paper Writing Service

WritePaperForMe made our list because of its reputation as a truly cheap essay writing service with good quality and customer support.

This service provides the best value for money. If you’re a student on a budget, this is a great service to consider for a simple and original essay with fast delivery at an affordable price.

WritePaperForMe promotes customer-centered service with round-the-clock support as well as free revisions to get your paper exactly where you want it before you submit it. This essay writing company also offers complete confidentiality to college students using its essay services.

Using WritePaperForMe is safe because it has been rated 4.8 out of 5 stars for customer satisfaction, according to hundreds of customer reviews on SiteJabber and other review platforms. In addition, most reviews state that students received good results. Generally, quality and efficiency were also highly rated, but mostly with simple requests.

WritePaperForMe is a place where you can hire a cheap essay writer who is knowledgeable enough to write a short, simple essay that you just don’t have enough time to write yourself.

This site has hundreds of writers online and takes pride in the speedy delivery of good-quality papers. The WritePaperForMe website also provides quite a few essay samples listed by category. Students have free access to these essays and excellent customer support for ordering the perfect paper to suit their needs, regardless of topic.

Some customers complained that some of the writers struggled with research-intensive assignments like research papers and dissertations, but the general response to this service was positive.

• Quick and truly affordable
• Great customer service
• Might not be the best option for anything but essays
• Plagiarism report is a paid add-on

We would advise hiring a more professional paper writing service for more in-depth and important papers. WritePaperForMe might not be ideal if you need someone truly knowledgeable to work on your STEM research/term paper, thesis, or dissertation.

   5. GradeMiners — The Fastest Writing Service

This college paper writing service has gone through some changes over the last couple of years. With time, customer reviews of this site are becoming better and better.

GradeMiners is striving to improve its quality, and it shows. This academic writing company is getting high ratings for speedy delivery, updated satisfaction guarantees, and incentives for return customers.

Those incentives are now present in the form of daily discounts and exclusive email offers for return customers who sign up for the newsletter, something that wasn’t available back in the day.

In addition to academic writing services, GradeMiners also offers homework help and problem-solving assistance for high school and college-level students.

This service has fewer professional college essay writers than other sites, and the company generally employs ESL writers. This service offers writing in everything from academic papers to thesis and dissertations.

GradeMiners offers a money-back guarantee as well as free revisions for up to 30 days. The company received a 4.6 out 5 customer rating and claimed to deliver 70% of its orders earlier than the specified deadline.

In spite of claims, discounts, and guarantees, reviews on some services are mixed. Pricing is of great concern because there is no dedicated pricing table for services.

• Great option for rush orders and last-minute papers
• Extra long revision period of 30 days
• Writers are professional enough to handle most papers
• The prices are somewhat high
• Mostly ESL writers

Overall, GradeMiners prices out as a more expensive option than other comparable services. For some students, the trade-off for fast delivery makes it worthwhile.

   6. EssayPro — One of the Most Popular and Reliable Services

EssayPro offers features and perks that other essay writing websites do not. For example, it allows you to browse its writing staff and choose your own writer based on their academic qualifications, areas of interest and expertise, as well as past customer ratings and reviews.

Once you’ve chosen your paper writer, you have access to free unlimited editing, a free title page, and around-the-clock customer support.

EssayPro is certainly a legit essay writing website that offers professional services and has the best reputation for quality, security, and customer satisfaction.

In addition, the company guarantees confidentiality and anonymity so that no one ever knows that you outsourced your essay.

Some customers complain that this service is overpriced, but we found EssayPro to be quite competitive in terms of price. Papers with a shorter return time will be more costly. The more lead time you give, the more writers will garner you a break on the price.

Access to the writer during the process and unlimited editing capability make EssayPro one of the most highly regarded and popular college essay writing services out there.

• Popular and trusted site
• There’s an option to choose your writer yourself
• Round-the-clock support
• No phone support
• Isn’t the best option for theses and dissertations

To make its services affordable, EssayPro mostly hires ESL writers with excellent academic credentials, giving customers a pool of talent to choose from and making the best fit possible for the subject matter being addressed.

   7. EssayNoDelay — Legit Writing Service for ESL Students

EssayNoDelay is a reputable college essay writing service that comes highly recommended. It is an international company based in Bulgaria that employs hundreds of writers, most of whom are ESL.

The company provides excellent customer service via live chat and email. Turnaround times are fast for delivery, but customer service response to student emails can take up to a week, even for emergent requests.

This service, out of all the ones we reviewed, has the deepest discount for first-time customers and returning requests, but you can expect to pay significantly more for subsequent orders.

This online paper writer service has decent pricing but could do better by adding loyalty programs or better discounts for returning customers.

The quality of work from EssayNoDelay is generally good, and reviews are positive. This service boasts that 91% percent of its clients have returned to place more than 5 orders. Most complaints are with regard to minor grammatical or formatting errors in the work.

This company guarantees to provide an original, plagiarism-free paper, with a 100% money-back satisfaction guarantee on its work.

• The best loyalty program among other sites
• Good quality
• Mostly caters towards ESL students, it’s hard to find a writer from the U.S., the UK or Canada
• While first order is cheap, repeat orders are way more expensive

EssayNoDelay has proven to be a cost-effective custom essay writing service that provides professional writing assistance to students at all levels of academia.

Paper Writing Services: Common Questions, Answered

How long does it take to have my essay written for me.

Depending on your chosen service, your essay can be written within hours, days, or weeks. The longer the lead time you allow for some services, the deeper the discounts. You can expect to pay more for rush orders.

The complexity of the paper you order can also impact the turnaround time. If you need to monitor the process, make suggestions to the writer, edit the work, or request revisions after the paper has been produced, it will add time to the process.

We suggest you don’t wait too long to place your order, there are sometimes unexpected issues that can delay the delivery of your paper, and since deadlines and due dates in academia are mostly fixed, it’s up to the scholar to make sure there is enough time for the professional writer to complete the order including proofreading, editing, and revisions if required.

It’s recommended that you keep in contact with the writing service and the hired writer, in particular, to make sure that everything is to your satisfaction to avoid delays.

The responsibility falls to the student or scholar to ensure that essays are submitted to teachers and professors on time with all requirements met regardless of academic level.

Will my essay be written by a professional essay writer?

Some of the reliable essay writing services we have listed hire professional writers at all levels of academia.

Most services will allow the customer to choose the writer based on their field of expertise, academic credentials, and customer reviews posted on the website.

In addition, most websites enable the customer to select either a Native English speaker/writer or an ESL expert.

Some colleges consistently check students’ writing styles, so if you’re an ESL student, it makes sense to hire an ESL writer so that your paper only stands out a little from your own writing.

The most popular sites profile the college essay writers who are the most requested and most highly reviewed to promote them to customers.

Other services will assign the best essay writer based on the type of paper, subject matter, and level of academia needed to complete the task.

All of the services we reviewed guarantee their results and hire experts who are true professionals in their fields or have the academic experience to write with authority on the subject they specialize in.

Most of the services allow you to monitor the process. If communication is an issue, or if you are unhappy with the results, their guarantees allow you to substitute another professional to satisfy your requirements.

How much does it cost to purchase an essay?

If we’re talking about undergraduate writing assignments, the typical price for a single page is about $11-20. It usually varies depending on how fast you need your essay written. On average, a typical three-page college essay written in three days will cost you $50-110.

We advise you to be wary of some cheap essay writing services selling papers for prices lower than $9. While the price may seem appealing, it’s best to steer clear of such sites because they hardly ever deliver papers of subpar quality, let alone high-quality, plagiarism-free essays.

Is it safe to buy essays online?

Yes, you can be reasonably certain that buying papers and essays online through any of the academic writing companies that we have reviewed here will be safe and secure. By using any of these sites, your personal data will be kept confidential and fully protected.

Your school should never learn that you hired an online essay writer to produce a paper for one of your classes. This is a valid concern when employing a writing service to write a paper for you. The possibility that your teacher or professor will learn that you bought your paper online is small.

Here’s the thing. The only way these college paper writing services can continue to thrive and stay in business is to keep student data confidential and safe. Most of them post a security and confidentiality guarantee on their websites. Some students opt to give a pseudonym or merely their initials to help guarantee themselves anonymity.

The companies we mentioned in this review keep their databases secure and do not sell or share student data. In most cases, they have a customer satisfaction guarantee which covers security and quality.

If a company is offering a 100% money-back guarantee, you can wager that they are doing their utmost to avoid giving any refunds.

Are online essay writing services legit?

As with any kind of service you employ, it’s always a case of “buyer beware.” The responsibility falls on the customer to do their due diligence in choosing a reputable and honest and online essay writing service from which to purchase papers.

However, be wary of basing your decisions solely on customer reviews, as many of these companies are plagued by scores of negative reviews from scam sites provided by rival essay writing companies.

Look for well-established websites with a large pool of writers, and be sure to utilize the live chat feature that is on most of the websites, to ask the questions that are pertinent to your situation.

You want to be sure that you employ a writing service with professional paper writers who specialize in your field of study. At the higher levels of academia, you need to be sure that the writers have the academic experience and credentials to produce the quality level required for a thesis or dissertation.

When special formatting and citations are required, you will need to do diligent interviewing of your essay writer to be assured that they are able to produce the quality of content that you require.

What if I am not satisfied with my paper?

The majority of the services you will consider have a process whereby you get edits and revisions for free within a specified period of time after the completion of the work.

In some cases, future edits and revisions will be charged a fee.

Many services also offer a customer satisfaction guarantee which means that the expert essay writer you engage (that the service contracts with) promises to revise the finished product to your satisfaction, or you are entitled to 100% of your money back.

We understand that it rarely goes to that extreme. Most of the time, you will be able to obtain a final product to your satisfaction on the first try, even without asking for a revision.

If you want to achieve that, please provide the most descriptive order instructions that you can. This way, you can avoid the revision process and save yourself and your writer some time.

Part of making sure that the best outcome is to choose a writing service that employs proficient and professional essay writers in your area of study and that you give clear and explicit instructions as to the formatting, citation, and style of essay you require.

We also recommend that you check in regularly with your writer throughout the process so that you may be able to catch any issues that may arise and be able to correct them right away.

What are the main drawbacks of essay writing services?

The main drawbacks of using companies that write essays for you are the expense and the risk of discovery. While most essay writing services online are not too costly, getting into larger projects with extensive proofing and editing can become expensive, especially on a student’s budget.

While these sites generally guarantee security and confidentiality, there is always the chance that your professors/teachers may notice a change in the quality or style of your essays and figure out that you purchased the work rather than producing it.

The other drawback of using the services of essay writing websites is that you don’t benefit from the work the same way you would have if you had done the work.

If you are doing the research and the citations, you will be enriched by the process and gain knowledge in the subject from doing the work.

Using a writing service only gives you the benefit of the result, the grade, or the points you gain, rather than a more profound knowledge of the subject matter.

This has the potential to trip you up later in life when you may be called upon for that knowledge in your field of study and lack the expertise because you paid someone else to do the work.

Professional essay writing services fill a need in providing writing assistance to students at all levels of academia, but they should only be used infrequently and in urgent or timely situations where the student or scholar is unable to provide a quality essay on the subject assigned.

We understand that there are circumstances where a writing service can be a real lifesaver. Still, we caution students not to abuse these services or use them as a replacement for acquiring knowledge in their chosen field of study. Instead, when the need arises, choose a reputable service that guarantees good quality work.

The news and editorial staff of the Delco Daily Times had no role in this post’s preparation.

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