I think the negative reaction people have comes from fear of punishment for human error, but fraud (meaning the real legal term, not colloquially) requires knowledge and intent.

That legal standard means that the risk of ruinous consequences for a 'lazy kid' who took a foolish shortcut is very low. It also requires that a prosecutor look at the circumstances and come to the conclusion that they can meet this standard in a courtroom. The bar is pretty high.

That said, it's very important to note that fraud has a pretty high rearrest (not just did it, but got arrested for it) rate between 35-50%. So when it gets to the point that someone has taken that step, a slap on the wrist simply isn't going to work. Ultimately, when that happens every piece of work they've touched, and every piece of work that depended on their work, gets called into question. The dependency graph affected by a single fraudster can be enormous.

You don't need to be in academia to understand that scientific progress depends on trust. If you don't trust the results people are publishing, you can't then build upon them. Reproducibility has been a known issue for a long time[0], and is widely agreed upon to be a 'crisis' by academics[1].

The advent of an easier way to publish correct-looking papers, or to plagiarize and synthesize other works without actually validating anything is only going to further diminish trust.

[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/533452a#citeas

[1] https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jou...

[0] https://www.globalproductprices.com/rankings/beef_price/

If you're taking public funds (directly or otherwise) with the intent to either:

A) Do little to no real work, and pass of the work of an AI as being your own work, or

B) Knowingly publish falsified data

Then you are, without a single shred of doubt, in criminal fraud territory. Further, the structural damage you inflict when you do the above is orders of magnitude greater than the initial fraud itself. That is a matter for civil courts ("Our company based on development on X fraudulent data, it cost us Y in damages").

Whether or not charges are pressed is going to happen way after all the internal reviews have demonstrated the person being charged has gone beyond the "honest mistake" threshold. It's like Walmart not bothering to call the cops until you're into felony territory, there's no point in doing so.

EDIT - The threshold amount varies. Sometimes it's as low as a few hundred dollars. However, the point stands on its own, because there's no universe where the sum in question is in misdemeanor territory.

To me, it's no different than stealing a car or tricking an old lady into handing over her fidelity account. You are stealing, and society says stealing is a criminal act.

What people are pissed about is the fact their tax dollars fund fake research. It's just fraud, pure and simple. And fraud should be punished brutally, especially in these cases, because the long tail of negative effects produces enormous damage.

What is a factor is 'getting a deal' and customer conviction. You want to give them an offer that makes them feel good about signing up immediately (increase conversion) and makes them feel like the product has substantial long-term value (induces post-purchase rationalization).

The annual plan with significant sale price accomplishes both goals, with the benefit of smoothing out your revenues and making it much easier to estimate your ROAS.

Beyond that, I would create an offering with 1-2 features tuned towards business customers. This kind of tool is a great knowledge management addition, and knowledge sharing is hugely valuable for business customers.

I'd price it the same per seat at the start ($5/m annual vs 9$/m monthly) and sell multiple seats at a time this way. If this works well, you will have found an existence proof of a highly lucrative customer group.

The cases they highlight, such as a multi-collision hit and run, are obvious bad human situations. But, this article feels like it's being a bit generous in its interpretation.

After all, I've seen Waymo cars cause wild traffic jams, and that sort of unexpected behavior could absolutely cause collisions.

But, from the company perspective, your value is based on the 'market rate' for your generically defined skills and experience.

If there's an edge, people will use it. Car manufacturers share data with insurance companies[1], which can impact drivers' insurance rates or lead to coverage denial.

Do you believe the same thing will never happen in healthcare?

Do you believe that sophisticated criminals won't engage in large-scale fraud attempts? In 2021, about 23.9 million people (9% of U.S. residents age 16 or older) had been victims of identity theft during the prior 12 months.[2]

You haven't been hurt by this sort of thing, which is great for you. But millions of other people aren't so lucky.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/11/technology/carmakers-driv...

[2] https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/victims-identity-th...

Everyone gets their social security number leaked...identity thieves have a field day.

Everyone gets their medical history leaked...insurance companies suddenly find another edge against the consumers.

Everyone gets their texts leaked...scammers now have blackmail against anyone who ever got spicy with their significant other.

Huge companies have been exploited before, and they will do so again and again. The only long-term winning strategy is to not let them have your data in the first place.

1. Money is printed, inflation occurs

2. Cost of living rises, wages follow (but not closely enough)

3. Buying power is decreased, but the tax brackets don't change much

4. The lower income groups proceeds to pay more taxes than they "should" while simultaneously being the group that can afford it the least. At the same time, this group is the most affected by inflation, hurting even more.

The money printer hurts everyone. Spinning it up as the expedited solution to every problem for political expedience is how we ended up with an enormous and ever-growing amount of debt.

On one hand, culturally, we pushed young people into colleges and universities at ever-increasing and frankly unethical price points. Many people have spent "buy a house" money on education. These people are then given a heavy burden which holds them back significantly both socially (raising families) and financially (owning a home, saving for retirement).

On the other hand however is the many people who decided not to go to school because it was simply unaffordable. They went to work instead, and often in the kinds of careers that are unappealing to college graduates who prefer white-collar work. Any student loan forgiveness is coming directly from the pockets of these people, who have on-average lower incomes and shorter career spans than their white-collar counterparts.

It's easy to see both sides on this one. The only meaningful solution I can see is to remove the (again, unethical) protections which prevent students from declaring bankruptcy over student loans. In turn, this would hopefully force wiser lending and more price-competition to bring the cost down.

Supabase - User Auth & Database

Stripe - Subscriptions & Payments

React or Svelte - Building landing and product pages

These tools are extremely popular and well documented, so anything you get stuck on is bound to be readily searchable online. If you've already got over a decade of front-end work experience I'd say just spin up Sveltekit or NextJS and follow along with a guide like this one:

Supabase Auth - https://supabase.com/docs/guides/auth/server-side/sveltekit

The pattern seems to reveal that CS truly has no concept of risk management whatsoever.

In finance this level of recklessness would get you banned from the industry.