After the first two days of the IRI§23 conference were primarily about practical usability, as far as the respective streams were related to ChatGPT, the focus on Saturday was on academic topics.
The first was the question of the protectability of language models and their results under copyright law. The answer to the latter is probably complex enough, there would have been no real need for the appeal for a general abolition of copyright in the field of science.
Highly interesting, however, were the reflections on the subject of teaching and on the subject of citation. With regard to teaching, the thesis was put forward without contradiction that the age of "academic homework" is finally over. No teacher can be expected to take responsibility for assignments that are actually written by highly developed chatbots.
And the scientific citation, is it also endangered? - I mean, yes certainly. How should a citation be composed if the result is not repeatable? After all, here there are massive differences in the new technologies compared to the common practice of citing web pages with an exact date of retrieval. But I also wonder if the question is really that prominent. Will there be legions of scientists using ChatGPT to write their papers? If so, then only in marginal areas, and there a copy&paste from Wikipedia should be sufficient. With appropriate reference.
Conclusion: Some questions can be solved, others only in the more distant future. It may be discussed further on academic ground.
