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Comment by HarryHirsch | Hacker News Reader

In real life it looks like this: https://www.foxnews.com/us/massachusetts-parents-sue-school-...

A kid living in a wealthy Boston suburb used AI for his essay (that much is not in doubt) and the family is now suing the district because the school objected and his chances of getting into a good finishing school have dropped.

On the other hand you have students attending abusive online universities who are flagged by their plagiarism detector and they wouldn't ever think of availing themselves of the law. US law is for the rich, the purpose of a system is what it does.

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I’m not sure what “used AI” means here, and the article is unclear, but it sure does sound like he did have it write it for him, and his parents are trying to “save his college admissions” by trying to say “it doesn’t say anywhere that having AI write it is bad, just having other people write it,” which is a specious argument at best. But again: gleaned from a crappy article.

You don’t need to be rich to change the law. You do need to be determined, and most people don’t have or want to spend the time.

Literally none of that changes the fact that the Universities are not, themselves, the law.

The law is unevenly enforced. My wife is currently dealing with a disruptive student from a wealthy family background. It's a chemistry class, you can't endanger your fellow students. Ordinarily, one would throw the kid out of the course, but there would be pushback from the family, and so she is cautious, let's deduct a handful of points, maybe she gets it, and thus it continues.

I completely agree that it is unevenly enforced. Still doesn't make universities the law.

You can't divorce the law that's on the books from the organs that enforce it. Any legal theorist will tell you that. Any lawyer will tell you that, and if you were ever involved in serious litigation you know.

Apologies if that’s how it came off, but that wasn’t what I was trying to say. Of course, in the moment the law is enforced, the enforcer “is the law.” That is true for any law, at any time, but it is not literally true. Enforcing a law unfairly can be (and often is) prosecuted as a crime, and gets either new laws passed or existing laws changed.

But that they can be sued in a court of law is actually a very big deal; it is the defining thing that makes them not the law.

A reminder of what I was responding to: “They issue the claim, the judgement and the penalty. And there is nothing you can do about it. Why? Because they are the law.”

That is plainly untrue. There is something you can do about it. You can sue them, precisely because they are not the law.

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