<< << My own words? I haven’t used my own words since 2022. I’m not even sure I have my own words anymore.
I thought about you wrote and I think you are right. Even though I am partial to author's POV ( despite some obvious, glaring issues ), I can't help feeling of two minds about it all. I don't want to undermine existing ecosystem, but then.. the existing ecosystem in research may need some decent shake up.
It's like the /s sign. Can some people not, for themselves, realize that this text is meant as a more or less a joke ? And before you ask, yeah, I am aware some of the people are on the spectrum, but still...
* some sincere people with very extreme takes,
* some trolls that masquerade as the above, to bully others over their credulousness and lack of guile, which is distinct from sarcasm,
* some trolls that insincerely speak anything that earns engagement,
* and more and more bots that mimic the above
So sadly, the answer to your question is generally yes.
Yes. Humor is very hard to grasp via text, especially sarcastic humor, because in person we use voice and body language to signal that something is meant as a joke.
I see this text as more open ended than a warning. It's a description of a possible future for us to contemplate. Does it have good points does it have bad points? Being satire, the protagonist is a strawman of course, but doesn't she also have some good points? It's not easy to tell where exactly the author stands where, the true argument stops and the satire begins. That's not necessarily a flaw because it doesn't actually really matter where the author stands for our ability to discuss the subject.
Scientist as prompter? Yes it seems fairly likely. But to what extent and how quickly will it happen? Surely scientists will still be able to at least give an outline of "their" work even in the future? Maybe?
Otherwise maybe we it will be a sort of inversion of control, where the language model is the supervisor, and the humans in the loop are more like research assistants doing the dirty work? Instead of a human wearing an exoskeleton, an AI wearing a biological exoskeleton? But this can only be a temporary state of affairs as we won't be needed for that forever.
A scientific project without human involvement? If a paper is published in a journal and no human wrote it and no human read it, is it really science? Does it really advance knowledge. Probably?
But honestly, I think it makes sense. In my experience with programming, when it comes to building and delivering software, it's not really about memorization. Honestly, search ability has been far more important. Wouldn't it be fair to think of AI as just another search ability?
What I'm curious about is this: in the end, experts are the ones who are best at distinguishing hallucinations. If you can just search with GPT and tell the difference, wouldn't that be enough? I can't imagine memorizing thousands or tens of thousands of lines.
I have ADHD, and when I get nervous, I tend to forget what I was going to say, so it's even more true for me.
> Wouldn't it be fair to think of AI as just another search ability?
If you're asking it questions, yes. It's like search but with a simulation of understanding and information synthesis far faster than a human can perform it.
If you're having it write your code, no. It's like a junior developer who has no awareness of the bigger picture, of incompatibilities, of understanding that hasn't been contained and can't be derived from the codebase.
> If you can just search with GPT and tell the difference, wouldn't that be enough?
The situation the satire is describing is an individual who is unable to tell the difference. The way the scenario is laid out, everything she's 'accomplished' has been to prompt ChatGPT and publish its answers with some degree of editing; it's clear that she, as an individual, is not an expert, does not understand the thing she is presenting, and does not know any of what she has purported to know. This is also a sadly common refrain these days.
> I can't imagine memorizing thousands or tens of thousands of lines.
It's not about memorizing thousands of lines of text; it's about demonstrating to the panel that you have an understanding of the thing you're claiming to have an understanding of.
I work with a lot of software and infrastructure at work. I can tell you how it all (or most of it) works together and interacts. I could not reproduce the configurations of any of the software from memory, nor recite any of the code, but I have an understanding of the system, how it works, what it was designed for, and what choices were made and why.
The professor in this article does not have any of that understanding. It would be as if I had Claude deploy a cluster of X, Y, Z components, configure them, and get them online, and then put on my resume that I had done it. It was accomplished as result of me, but if I don't understand the system then there's no difference between me doing it and the CEO doing it, or my son, or someone from Taskrabbit.
So yeah, it's not about memorization, it's about understanding.
Calling it "Discrimination" is obviously absurd but if the process produces useful results, one ought to seriously consider whether it might be worth switching.
I understand we have always conventionally transported goods by horse. Yes, this employee knows nothing about horses, and in fact is rather spooked by them, but we've checked! Their claim to be able to transport goods faster, without a horse, somehow seems to hold up.
Maybe, just maybe, we should take this whole "truck" concept seriously?
I don't think the argument is necessarily against the use of the tools entirely. My interpretation is that it's against delegating to them all understanding.
Humans can only usefully steer LLMs if they have some understanding or context the LLMs do not.
Put another way: if all that you're doing is prompting the AI and giving me the result then I have no use for you. If you're not contributing insight, understanding, experience, or creativity then it's far cheaper for me to prompt the AI myself.
"prepared to do what I do every single day in my actual scientific practice: type a prompt and receive a coherent, well-structured response that I would then lightly edit and present as my own thinking."
But when humans do it suddenly it's "standing on the shoulders of giants"
I don't get how you can possibly call it plagiarism if it produce a novel breakthrough - by definition, the existing knowledge base doesn't contain the new ideas generated in this process.
Quite a clever way to take a jab at the cross-coast rival. Well done
It's actually embarrassing that she thought all that prompting would have been acceptable during the talk.
A qualifed researcher would have had their agent perform the talk on their behalf rather than waste everyone's time.
<< << My own words? I haven’t used my own words since 2022. I’m not even sure I have my own words anymore.
I thought about you wrote and I think you are right. Even though I am partial to author's POV ( despite some obvious, glaring issues ), I can't help feeling of two minds about it all. I don't want to undermine existing ecosystem, but then.. the existing ecosystem in research may need some decent shake up.
It's a joke.
So is my comment.
This is satire.
Honest question : does it need to be said ?
It's like the /s sign. Can some people not, for themselves, realize that this text is meant as a more or less a joke ? And before you ask, yeah, I am aware some of the people are on the spectrum, but still...
Is humor that hard to grasp on the internet ?
Among other, the voices on the internet include:
* some sincere people with very extreme takes, * some trolls that masquerade as the above, to bully others over their credulousness and lack of guile, which is distinct from sarcasm, * some trolls that insincerely speak anything that earns engagement, * and more and more bots that mimic the above
So sadly, the answer to your question is generally yes.
> Honest question : does it need to be said ?
At the current time I'm writing this, all other top-level comments are engaging with the article as if it were sincere. So, yes.
> Is humor that hard to grasp on the internet ?
Yes. Humor is very hard to grasp via text, especially sarcastic humor, because in person we use voice and body language to signal that something is meant as a joke.
Yes because Poe’s Law has never been more true than the current era.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law
How wow, it even has a name and a wikipedia article...
Guess that makes it official then. We are all automatons pretending to be flesh :-)
I hope so, but I work with people with exactly this attitude and approach.
That’s what makes it good satire.
Your comment, or the post? ;) (I'll see myself out)
I see this text as more open ended than a warning. It's a description of a possible future for us to contemplate. Does it have good points does it have bad points? Being satire, the protagonist is a strawman of course, but doesn't she also have some good points? It's not easy to tell where exactly the author stands where, the true argument stops and the satire begins. That's not necessarily a flaw because it doesn't actually really matter where the author stands for our ability to discuss the subject.
Scientist as prompter? Yes it seems fairly likely. But to what extent and how quickly will it happen? Surely scientists will still be able to at least give an outline of "their" work even in the future? Maybe?
Otherwise maybe we it will be a sort of inversion of control, where the language model is the supervisor, and the humans in the loop are more like research assistants doing the dirty work? Instead of a human wearing an exoskeleton, an AI wearing a biological exoskeleton? But this can only be a temporary state of affairs as we won't be needed for that forever.
A scientific project without human involvement? If a paper is published in a journal and no human wrote it and no human read it, is it really science? Does it really advance knowledge. Probably?
[delayed]
But honestly, I think it makes sense. In my experience with programming, when it comes to building and delivering software, it's not really about memorization. Honestly, search ability has been far more important. Wouldn't it be fair to think of AI as just another search ability?
What I'm curious about is this: in the end, experts are the ones who are best at distinguishing hallucinations. If you can just search with GPT and tell the difference, wouldn't that be enough? I can't imagine memorizing thousands or tens of thousands of lines.
I have ADHD, and when I get nervous, I tend to forget what I was going to say, so it's even more true for me.
> Wouldn't it be fair to think of AI as just another search ability?
If you're asking it questions, yes. It's like search but with a simulation of understanding and information synthesis far faster than a human can perform it.
If you're having it write your code, no. It's like a junior developer who has no awareness of the bigger picture, of incompatibilities, of understanding that hasn't been contained and can't be derived from the codebase.
> If you can just search with GPT and tell the difference, wouldn't that be enough?
The situation the satire is describing is an individual who is unable to tell the difference. The way the scenario is laid out, everything she's 'accomplished' has been to prompt ChatGPT and publish its answers with some degree of editing; it's clear that she, as an individual, is not an expert, does not understand the thing she is presenting, and does not know any of what she has purported to know. This is also a sadly common refrain these days.
> I can't imagine memorizing thousands or tens of thousands of lines.
It's not about memorizing thousands of lines of text; it's about demonstrating to the panel that you have an understanding of the thing you're claiming to have an understanding of.
I work with a lot of software and infrastructure at work. I can tell you how it all (or most of it) works together and interacts. I could not reproduce the configurations of any of the software from memory, nor recite any of the code, but I have an understanding of the system, how it works, what it was designed for, and what choices were made and why.
The professor in this article does not have any of that understanding. It would be as if I had Claude deploy a cluster of X, Y, Z components, configure them, and get them online, and then put on my resume that I had done it. It was accomplished as result of me, but if I don't understand the system then there's no difference between me doing it and the CEO doing it, or my son, or someone from Taskrabbit.
So yeah, it's not about memorization, it's about understanding.
You can bring notes to a chalk talk.
Calling it "Discrimination" is obviously absurd but if the process produces useful results, one ought to seriously consider whether it might be worth switching.
I understand we have always conventionally transported goods by horse. Yes, this employee knows nothing about horses, and in fact is rather spooked by them, but we've checked! Their claim to be able to transport goods faster, without a horse, somehow seems to hold up.
Maybe, just maybe, we should take this whole "truck" concept seriously?
I don't think the argument is necessarily against the use of the tools entirely. My interpretation is that it's against delegating to them all understanding.
Humans can only usefully steer LLMs if they have some understanding or context the LLMs do not.
Put another way: if all that you're doing is prompting the AI and giving me the result then I have no use for you. If you're not contributing insight, understanding, experience, or creativity then it's far cheaper for me to prompt the AI myself.
"prepared to do what I do every single day in my actual scientific practice: type a prompt and receive a coherent, well-structured response that I would then lightly edit and present as my own thinking."
So, plagiarism. Daily.
This is satire
Replace science with software development and this just reads like half of HN right now.
despite being satire this is no joke, this is what we are headed into if we dont stop the decline.
I think that's what the satire is trying to warn against.
What’s going on with social queues today where so many people here are not immediately understanding this is clearly satire?
But when humans do it suddenly it's "standing on the shoulders of giants"
I don't get how you can possibly call it plagiarism if it produce a novel breakthrough - by definition, the existing knowledge base doesn't contain the new ideas generated in this process.
And we've proven it can handle complex, novel thinking when it solved a significant Erdos problem back in May: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ai-just-solved-an...