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Prism

openai.com

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Re: Prism

#61

Post by SecretDreams »

JBorrow wrote: post #32

From my perspective as a journal editor and a reviewer these kinds of tools cause many more problems than they actually solve. They make the 'barrier to entry' for submitting vibed semi-plausible journal articles much lower, which I understand some may see as a benefit. The drawback is that scientific editors and reviewers provide those services for free, as a community benefit. One example was a submission their und…

I appreciate and sympathize with this take. I'll just note that, in general, journal publications have gone considerably downhill over the last decade, even before the advent of AI. Frequency has gone up, quality has gone down, and the ability to actually check if everything in the article is actually valid is quite challenging as frequency goes up.

This is a space that probably needs substantial reform, much like grad school models in general (IMO).

Re: Prism

#62

Post by petcat »

bloppe wrote: post #47
JBorrow wrote: post #32

From my perspective as a journal editor and a reviewer these kinds of tools cause many more problems than they actually solve. They make the 'barrier to entry' for submitting vibed semi-plausible journal articles much lower, which I understand some may see as a benefit. The drawback is that scientific editors and reviewers provide those services for free, as a community benefit. One example was a submission their und…

I wonder if there's a way to tax the frivolous submissions. There could be a submission fee that would be fully reimbursed iff the submission is actually accepted for publication. If you're confident in your paper, you can think of it as a deposit. If you're spamming journals, you're just going to pay for the wasted time. Maybe you get reimbursed for half as long as there are no obvious hallucinations.

> There could be a submission fee that would be fully reimbursed if the submission is actually accepted for publication.

While well-intentioned, I think this is just gate-keeping. There are mountains of research that result in nothing interesting whatsoever (aside from learning about what doesn't work). And all of that is still valuable knowledge!

Re: Prism

#63

Post by crazygringo »

efficax wrote: post #44
crazygringo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious how it compares to Overleaf in terms of features? Putting aside the AI aspect entirely, I'm simply curious if this is a viable Overleaf competitor -- especially since it's free. I do self-host Overleaf which is annoying but ultimately doable if you don't want to pay the $21/mo (!). I do have to wonder for how long it will be free or even supported, though. On the one hand, remote LaTeX compiling gets expe…

Overleaf is a little curious to me. What's the point? Just install LaTeX. Claude is very good at manipulating LaTeX documents and I've found it effective at fixing up layouts for me.

I can code in monospace (of course) but I just can't write in monospace markup. I need something approaching WYSIWIG. It's just how my brain works -- I need the italics to look like italics, I need the footnote text to not interrupt the middle of the paragraph.

The visual editor in Overleaf isn't true WYSIWIG, but it's close enough. It feels like working in a word processor, not in a code editor. And the interface overall feels simple and modern.

(And that's just for solo usage -- it's really the collaborative stuff that turns into a game-changer.)

Re: Prism

#64

Post by radioactivist »

efficax wrote: post #44
crazygringo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious how it compares to Overleaf in terms of features? Putting aside the AI aspect entirely, I'm simply curious if this is a viable Overleaf competitor -- especially since it's free. I do self-host Overleaf which is annoying but ultimately doable if you don't want to pay the $21/mo (!). I do have to wonder for how long it will be free or even supported, though. On the one hand, remote LaTeX compiling gets expe…

Overleaf is a little curious to me. What's the point? Just install LaTeX. Claude is very good at manipulating LaTeX documents and I've found it effective at fixing up layouts for me.

In my circles the killer features of Overleaf are the collaborative ones (easy sharing, multi-user editing with track changes/comments). Academic writing in my community basically went from emailed draft-new-FINAL-v4.tex files (or a shared folder full of those files) to basically people just dumping things on Overleaf fairly quickly.

Re: Prism

#65

Post by noitpmeder »

s0rce wrote: post #57
bloppe wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if there's a way to tax the frivolous submissions. There could be a submission fee that would be fully reimbursed iff the submission is actually accepted for publication. If you're confident in your paper, you can think of it as a deposit. If you're spamming journals, you're just going to pay for the wasted time. Maybe you get reimbursed for half as long as there are no obvious hallucinations.

That would be tricky, I often submitted to multiple high impact journals going down the list until someone accepted it. You try to ballpark where you can go but it can be worth aiming high. Maybe this isn't a problem and there should be payment for the efforts to screen the paper but then I would expect the reviewers to be paid for their time.

I mean your methodology also sounds suspect. You're just going down a list until it sticks. You don't care where it ends up (I'm sure within reason) just as long as it is accepted and published somewhere (again, within reason).

Re: Prism

#66

Post by pixelready »

bloppe wrote: post #47
JBorrow wrote: post #32

From my perspective as a journal editor and a reviewer these kinds of tools cause many more problems than they actually solve. They make the 'barrier to entry' for submitting vibed semi-plausible journal articles much lower, which I understand some may see as a benefit. The drawback is that scientific editors and reviewers provide those services for free, as a community benefit. One example was a submission their und…

I wonder if there's a way to tax the frivolous submissions. There could be a submission fee that would be fully reimbursed iff the submission is actually accepted for publication. If you're confident in your paper, you can think of it as a deposit. If you're spamming journals, you're just going to pay for the wasted time. Maybe you get reimbursed for half as long as there are no obvious hallucinations.

I’d worry about creating a perverse incentive to farm rejected submissions. Similar to those renter application fee scams.

Re: Prism

#67

Post by verdverm »

I remember, something like a month ago, Altman twit'n that they were stopping all product work to focus on training. Was that written on water?

Seems like they have only announced products since and no new model trained from scratch. Are they still having pre-training issues?

Re: Prism

#68

Post by noitpmeder »

lupsasca wrote: post #46
JBorrow wrote: post #32

From my perspective as a journal editor and a reviewer these kinds of tools cause many more problems than they actually solve. They make the 'barrier to entry' for submitting vibed semi-plausible journal articles much lower, which I understand some may see as a benefit. The drawback is that scientific editors and reviewers provide those services for free, as a community benefit. One example was a submission their und…

I am very sympathetic to your point of view, but let me offer another perspective. First off, you can already vibe-write slop papers with AI, even in LaTeX format--tools like Prism are not needed for that. On the other hand, it can really help researchers improve the quality of their papers. I'm someone who collaborates with many students and postdocs. My time is limited and I spend a lot of it on LaTeX drudgery that…

AI generating references seems like a hop away from absolute unverifiable trash.

Re: Prism

#69

Post by bhadass »

efficax wrote: post #44
crazygringo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious how it compares to Overleaf in terms of features? Putting aside the AI aspect entirely, I'm simply curious if this is a viable Overleaf competitor -- especially since it's free. I do self-host Overleaf which is annoying but ultimately doable if you don't want to pay the $21/mo (!). I do have to wonder for how long it will be free or even supported, though. On the one hand, remote LaTeX compiling gets expe…

Overleaf is a little curious to me. What's the point? Just install LaTeX. Claude is very good at manipulating LaTeX documents and I've found it effective at fixing up layouts for me.

collaboration is the killer feature tbh. overleaf is basically google docs meets latex.. you can have multiple coauthors editing simultaneously, leave comments, see revision history, etc.

a lot of academics aren't super technical and don't want to deal with git workflows or syncing local environments. they just want to write their fuckin' paper (WTFP).

overleaf lets the whole research team work together without anyone needing to learn version control or debug their local texlive installation.

also nice for quick edits from any machine without setting anything up. the "just install it locally" advice assumes everyones comfortable with that, but plenty of researchers treat computers as appliances lol.

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