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AI boosts research careers but narrow the span of ideas explored: study

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Re: AI boosts research careers but narrow the span of ideas explored: study

#91

Post by lelanthran »

Arainach wrote: post #10
Nevermark wrote: post #5

Any flattening of discovery due to AI, but will be temporary. We tend to think that obvious potential is the same as realized potential, for new technology. For any specific context, there are generally innumerable smaller adaptations and capability thresholds that have to be crossed. And the price for that journey is often temporary loss off overt productivity.

No, this is significantly more permanent. LLMs are autocomplete generators based off current context, and training generations of people to always ask the planet burners instead of learning to think for themselves - and never having the experience of having to slowly think over the same thing for an extended period - may well mean a permanent cap to human knowledge and a dramatic slowdown or end to new knowledge.

>No, this is significantly more permanent. LLMs are autocomplete generators based off current context, and training generations of people to always ask the planet burners instead of learning to think for themselves - and never having the experience of having to slowly think over the same thing for an extended period - may well mean a permanent cap to human knowledge and a dramatic slowdown or end to new knowledge.

I said as much - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48870324 - prepare to be downvoted.

Re: AI boosts research careers but narrow the span of ideas explored: study

#92

Post by lelanthran »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #24
Arainach wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is significantly more permanent. LLMs are autocomplete generators based off current context, and training generations of people to always ask the planet burners instead of learning to think for themselves - and never having the experience of having to slowly think over the same thing for an extended period - may well mean a permanent cap to human knowledge and a dramatic slowdown or end to new knowledge.

You act like humanity doesn't exist in a competitive environment. If you think AI codegen is a mistake? Just relax, keep writing code by hand and wait for the pendulum to prove you right while showering you in wealth. There are plenty of people making this bet, and I wish the best of luck to you because I'm 99% certain you're on the losing end of it.

> You act like humanity doesn't exist in a competitive environment. If you think AI codegen is a mistake? Just relax, keep writing code by hand and wait for the pendulum to prove you right while showering you in wealth. There are plenty of people making this bet, and I wish the best of luck to you because I'm 99% certain you're on the losing end of it.

I don't really get this sentiment. You can be in a competitive environment, but it means nothing if the incentives are skewed.

Ever heard of "a race to the bottom"? That's a competitive environment too, after all, and no one thinks it's positive when applied to humans.

Re: AI boosts research careers but narrow the span of ideas explored: study

#93

Post by skeledrew »

analog31 wrote: post #80
skeledrew wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do, and through conversations have learned that they enjoy what they do and publish patents (they're PhD in industry), but ultimately what they seek is "fame and glory" (literal quote). I was also in academics myself up to the Master's level (research track), and personally had to deal with the politics of getting support for what I wanted to work on; that experience helped to discourage me from going on to a PhD,…

Oddly enough my experience is the opposite. I live in an academic town, and many of my neighbors are scientists. They view the "fame and glory" as something that maybe someone else has a chance of achieving, but not a realistic pursuit for themselves. Pursuit of funding (which now includes suing the Federal Government) is at best stressful drudgework for them. I work in industry. In that case, nobody who meets me wou…

> They view the "fame and glory" as something that maybe someone else has a chance of achieving, but not a realistic pursuit for themselves.

This was also my default thinking, but we really see more and more "nerds" getting into the spotlight. It could be a kind of self-fulfilling situation though: the ones working for that fame make the choices that get them there, such as opting to do research that's more "palatable" to those holding the purse strings, and so have the support to gain and maintain presence. Those who would rather blaze their own path generally get left in obscurity (unless they find something truly game-changing), even if it turns out they're more than the former group.

Re: AI boosts research careers but narrow the span of ideas explored: study

#94

Post by analog31 »

skeledrew wrote: post #93
analog31 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oddly enough my experience is the opposite. I live in an academic town, and many of my neighbors are scientists. They view the "fame and glory" as something that maybe someone else has a chance of achieving, but not a realistic pursuit for themselves. Pursuit of funding (which now includes suing the Federal Government) is at best stressful drudgework for them. I work in industry. In that case, nobody who meets me wou…

> They view the "fame and glory" as something that maybe someone else has a chance of achieving, but not a realistic pursuit for themselves. This was also my default thinking, but we really see more and more "nerds" getting into the spotlight. It could be a kind of self-fulfilling situation though: the ones working for that fame make the choices that get them there, such as opting to do research that's more "palatabl…

From my point of view, nerds getting into the spotlight is great. Public recognition of good work is fine by me. It doesn't have to stem from sinister motivations or "incentives."

But a generalization that science work is motivated by fame and fortune just doesn't make sense.

Re: AI boosts research careers but narrow the span of ideas explored: study

#96

Post by joe_mamba »

overgard wrote: post #95

I think we're finding measures of "productivity" in almost all fields are pretty bad and AI is a great way to game them. PR's, papers, etc. We have to stop looking at volume-of-stuff as a useful metric.

>We have to stop looking at volume-of-stuff as a useful metric.

Unfortunately, "volume of stuff" is how governments allocate funding, for stuff like education, healthcare, research, etc

Any kind of quality metrics, outside of the free market capitalist "how much profit you made?", will be gamed within a few years to get the same results, for things that aren't designed to turn a profit, since there's no fair and objective metric in that case.

Re: AI boosts research careers but narrow the span of ideas explored: study

#97

Post by spongebobstoes »

rznicolet wrote: post #55
spongebobstoes wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's an interesting point. is it worthwhile to struggle through an incidental task that has been solved before? we all stand on the shoulders of giants I think in most cases, understanding is the point. we don't expect students to derive general relativity before doing astrophysics. re-invention is only a tool for understanding

Small counterpoint to your analogy, as someone who studied astrophysics: I actually did have a requirement to understand general relativity! Deriving all of it independently from scratch wasn't something we did, but there _were_ derivations involved. And it was definitely worth working through -- it _is_ a good tool for understanding. (I've long since left the field, but I don't regret the work I did.)

that's exactly what I'm saying. understanding is good

you didn't re-invent it, you learned it from a teacher and then practiced until you understood it to the required degree

Re: AI boosts research careers but narrow the span of ideas explored: study

#98

Post by adevalois »

I’m watching this play out in financial markets right now. It’s the newest form of the crowded trade. When everyone optimizes against the same signal, individual returns go up right until the aggregate return of the signal decays. And now that fundamental managers and quants alike are wiring the same language models into their workflows, decisions are being influenced in the same direction, and it leaves a fingerprint in market behavior.

Crowded trades and crowded research share the same root. The reward is easier to measure than the thing it proxies for. Returns are easier to measure than durable edge, and citations are easier to measure than discovery, so everyone digs the same hole deeper. Which leaves the study’s real question. Are citations measuring discovery at all, or just the crowd?

Re: AI boosts research careers but narrow the span of ideas explored: study

#99

Post by m4x »

radarsat1 wrote: post #59

"boost research careers".. seems like a pretty drastic conclusion to draw based on a technology that has existed for like 3 years and only lately is any good..

The study looks at forms of AI that have existed for a long time, as well as newer LLMs. From the article: "Their dataset included 41.3 million English-language papers published between 1980 and 2025 in ..."

Earlier studies looked at the effect of web search on research. This is all covered near the beginning of the article.

Re: AI boosts research careers but narrow the span of ideas explored: study

#100

Post by ip26 »

dahart wrote: post #32

> Scientists who adopt AI gain productivity and visibility: On average, they publish three times as many papers, receive nearly five times as many citations, and become team leaders a year or two earlier than those who do not. To me this effect doesn’t seem to reflect on AI very much, it seems to reflect on humans. Like maybe this is more evidence of the Babble Hypothesis and the incentives in research than AI, no? h…

If we’re just spitballing, it certainly could be that, but it’s also obvious that publishing papers can help communicate your existing work. AI can definitely help at that, and even great work needs to be communicated.

If this same article had said “adoption of word processors over typewriters increases publishing”, would we still be thinking of the babble hypothesis?

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