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Deep learning gets the glory, deep fact checking gets ignored

rachel.fast.ai

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Re: Deep learning gets the glory, deep fact checking gets ignored

#11

Post by godelski »

aucisson_masque wrote: post #9

It’s like fake news is taking in science now. Saying any stupid thing will attract much more view and « likes » than those debunking them. Except that we can’t compare twitter to nature journal. Science is supposed to be immune to these kind of bullshit thanks to reputed journals and pair reviewing, blocking a publication before it does any harm. Was that a failure of nature ?

Yes. And let's not get started on that ML Quantum Wormhole bullshit...

We've taken this all too far. It is bad enough to lie to the masses in Pop-Sci articles. But we're straight up doing it in top tier journals. Some are good faith mistakes, but a lot more often they seem like due diligence just wasn't ever done. Both by researchers and reviewers.

I at least have to thank the journals. I've hated them for a long time and wanted to see their end. Free up publishing and bullshit novelty and narrowing of research. I just never thought they'd be the ones to put the knife through their own heart.

But I'm still not happy about that tbh. The only result of this is that the public grows to distrust science more and more. In a time where we need that trust more than ever. We can't expect the public to differentiate nuanced takes about internal quibbling. And we sure as hell shouldn't be giving ammunition to the anti-science crowds, like junk science does...

Re: Deep learning gets the glory, deep fact checking gets ignored

#12

Post by YossarianFrPrez »

amelius wrote: post #2

Before making AI do research, perhaps we should first let it __reproduce__ research. For example, give it a paper of some deep learning technique and make it produce an implementation of that paper. Before it can do that, I have no hope that it can produce novel ideas.

Seconded, as not only is this an interesting idea, it might also help solve the issue of checking for reproducibility. Yet even then human evaluators would need to go over the AI-reproduced research with a fine-toothed comb.

Practically speaking, I think there are roles for current LLMs in research. One is in the peer review process. LLMs can assist in evaluating the data-processing code used by scientists. Another is for brainstorming and the first pass at lit reviews.

Re: Deep learning gets the glory, deep fact checking gets ignored

#14

Post by lamename »

aucisson_masque wrote: post #9

It’s like fake news is taking in science now. Saying any stupid thing will attract much more view and « likes » than those debunking them. Except that we can’t compare twitter to nature journal. Science is supposed to be immune to these kind of bullshit thanks to reputed journals and pair reviewing, blocking a publication before it does any harm. Was that a failure of nature ?

The Bullshit asymmetry principle comes to mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law

Re: Deep learning gets the glory, deep fact checking gets ignored

#15

Post by airstrike »

rustcleaner wrote: post #7

[flagged]

I couldn't agree more. On a random night a few months ago I found myself in that curious half-asleep-half-awake state and this time I had became aware of my brain's constant jibbering phrases. It was as if I could hear my thoughts before the filter pass through which they become actual cohesive sentences.

I could "see" hundreds of words/thoughts/meanings being generated in a diffuse way, all at the same time but also slowly evolving over time and then see my brain distill them into a sentence. It would happen repeatedly every second ridiculously fast yet also "slow enough" that I could see it happen.

It's just my personal half-asleep hallucination, so obviously take from it what you will (~nothing) but I can't shake the feeling we need a similar algorithm. If I ever pursue a doctorate degree, this is what I'll be trying.

Re: Deep learning gets the glory, deep fact checking gets ignored

#16

Post by lamename »

aucisson_masque wrote: post #9

It’s like fake news is taking in science now. Saying any stupid thing will attract much more view and « likes » than those debunking them. Except that we can’t compare twitter to nature journal. Science is supposed to be immune to these kind of bullshit thanks to reputed journals and pair reviewing, blocking a publication before it does any harm. Was that a failure of nature ?

Have you seen the statistics about high impact journals having higher retraction/unverified rates on papers?

The root causes can be argued...but keep that in mind.

No single paper is proof. Bodies of work across many labs, independent verification, etc is the actual gold standard.

Re: Deep learning gets the glory, deep fact checking gets ignored

#17

Post by ojosilva »

amelius wrote: post #2

Before making AI do research, perhaps we should first let it __reproduce__ research. For example, give it a paper of some deep learning technique and make it produce an implementation of that paper. Before it can do that, I have no hope that it can produce novel ideas.

I thought you were going to say "give AI the first part of a paper (prompt) and let it finish it (completion)" as a validation AI can produce science at par with research results. Before it can do that, I have no hope that it can produce novel ideas.

Re: Deep learning gets the glory, deep fact checking gets ignored

#20

Post by TimTheTinker »

rustcleaner wrote: post #7

[flagged]

Human "reality checker" systems are analogous to a discriminator in a generative adversarial network, but strongly informed by emotion.

Psychology tells us that regardless of how "emotional" we are, our sense of truth/falsehood goes first through an emotional circuit, which is informed by underlying beliefs.

If someone states something you strongly disagree with, your first internal response will be emotional; then your thoughts will pick it up from there.

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