Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

ChatGPT generates fake data set to support scientific hypothesis

nature.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 159 posts

Re: ChatGPT generates fake data set to support scientific hypothesis

#32

Post by Tostino »

jhbadger wrote: post #17
IanCal wrote: post #12

For anyone jumping in who hasn't read the article, this is not about hallucinations and some researchers being surprised that GPT-4 doesn't always respond with absolute truth. Instead it's about how easily it can be used to generate plausible looking datasets that would confirm a hypothesis. It's a warning note to journals about how fake data can more easily be created.

Exactly. It's no different from the fake data sets created by hand in scientific misconduct cases for years, just I guess easier. I guess that's not a good thing, but given even making a fake data set by hand is far easier than generating real data, I'm not sure if this will suddenly make more people fake data.

The fake data that's been caught so far in just about every one of the cases that I've read about has been ridiculously poorly constructed fake data.

I think the people that are good at faking data simply don't get caught.

Re: ChatGPT generates fake data set to support scientific hypothesis

#34

Post by Nition »

Somewhere in the mind's eye of science fiction is a world where we have near-unlimited productivity and knowledge and we're all free to pursue our self-actualized lives as we see fit.

But as productivity increases, and as AI improves, in both cases individual greed holds back lifting up the many. And so we end up asking for caution on automating away someone's job, or caution on rapid AI progress.

Does anyone know any good writing on how humanity might fight its way through all these mires of progress to the other side - that science fiction world that may or may not even be possible? How the world might look as these things continue to progress over time? Either fiction or a serious analysis is fine.

Most sci-fi skips straight to "There is no more need for University, we simply ask the AI", missing the "students are using AI to cheat" phase entirely.

Re: ChatGPT generates fake data set to support scientific hypothesis

#35

Post by peteradio »

sigmar wrote: post #16

>“It will make it very easy for any researcher or group of researchers to create fake measurements on non-existent patients, fake answers to questionnaires or to generate a large data set on animal experiments.” Perhaps I'm naive, but I think the people that want to fake data were already doing it without tools like chatgpt. Especially since a ton of biological data is normally distributed, so it's exceedingly easy t…

The easiest data to fake is null results because anything else is replicable, hence the importance of replication.

Re: ChatGPT generates fake data set to support scientific hypothesis

#36

Post by peteradio »

elashri wrote: post #25

Ironically, I tried to ask ChatGPT to generate a signal + some plausibly background for a potential Supersymmetry particle discovery (with some details about model independent searches) and it started hallucinating like someone whose heart broken and spent the night drinking at the bar. I chose the wrong field to be able to fake data /S.

If anyone ever tried to talk to me about supersymmetry again I'd probably react the same.

Re: ChatGPT generates fake data set to support scientific hypothesis

#39

Post by hliyan »

Nition wrote: post #34

Somewhere in the mind's eye of science fiction is a world where we have near-unlimited productivity and knowledge and we're all free to pursue our self-actualized lives as we see fit. But as productivity increases, and as AI improves, in both cases individual greed holds back lifting up the many. And so we end up asking for caution on automating away someone's job, or caution on rapid AI progress. Does anyone know an…

The world of Star Trek is one where humanity learns from the devastation of world war three and over a century, creates a society where almost everything is run by computers, money doesn't exist, and people work primarily for their personal satisfaction. But I think true AGI is frowned upon there.
Post reply on HN