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Evidence of inconsistencies in evaluation process and selection of winners

kaggle.com

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Re: Evidence of inconsistencies in evaluation process and selection of winners

#161

Post by probably_wrong »

charcircuit wrote: post #36
irasigman wrote: post #4

It’s a shame that Arvix (and once thoughtful places like Kaggle) are used for self-promotion. I get people want to work at an AI lab but slopping it in public in this manner is counterproductive to the original intended purpose of these places.

Hasn't this always been the case? Arxiv being used for self promotion and Kaggle being used to pivot into the industry. It is not a recent phenomenon.

I cannot speak for the intended purpose of ArXiv by its creators but I can tell you that, in the conference circles, its main intended use was flag planting: people were afraid that their competitors would tweet some results while their (earlier) paper was under anonymous review, and so researchers started putting their stuff on ArXiv first to ensure no one would "steal" their claim of being there first.

Re: Evidence of inconsistencies in evaluation process and selection of winners

#162

Post by jagged-chisel »

AlexandrB wrote: post #101
jagged-chisel wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we need to address the underlying causes of people outsourcing their thinking like that. And a big contribution is “move fast.” No one has time to read, process, and think, because The Powers That Be (capital) want their results now.

You're reaching for the easy answer ("capitalism bad"). Look at all the students cheating with AI, folks using AI to write personal greetings to family, etc. On some level, it's human nature to take shortcuts. I don't know how you even begin to address that.

First, I don’t pretend that’s the only driver.

Second, the whole reason students are doing that is still monetary motivation.

Third, we’ve been running capitalism for long enough that we don’t even know what the baseline for “it’s human nature to take shortcuts” is without a monetary motivation.

Now that you’ve made me think on this longer, I conclude that indeed capitalism is the problem. At least, the part of capitalism that wants infinite growth immediately.

Re: Evidence of inconsistencies in evaluation process and selection of winners

#164

Post by redsocksfan45 »

jagged-chisel wrote: post #37
ecshafer wrote: post #31

AI is useful. But the amount of people that are simply offloading all of their thinking to AI and blindly accepting the answer is absurd. Kaggle is most likely using ai to assess the submissions and are not using any common sense by blindly accepting the results.

I think we need to address the underlying causes of people outsourcing their thinking like that. And a big contribution is “move fast.” No one has time to read, process, and think, because The Powers That Be (capital) want their results now.

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Re: Evidence of inconsistencies in evaluation process and selection of winners

#165

Post by mattstir »

blacklimetea wrote: post #116

What a whiner! The problem with removing bullying from the upbringing process is you get insufferable twats like this who can't take "No" for an answer and who can't take a loss. His mom told him "Everything you do is art!"

What an odd takeaway from this. The commenter attempting to point out blatant inconsistencies in the winning submission means they should have been bullied more as a child? Could you elaborate on how you came to that conclusion?

Re: Evidence of inconsistencies in evaluation process and selection of winners

#166

Post by tangenter »

Zsfe510asG wrote: post #147

All AI companies have slop press sites that hype them up. What we saw since 2020 is the largest industrial propaganda campaign in history. It started with Lex Fridman planted interviews to make AI researchers appear human and ends with AI awarding AI prizes. Mainstream journalists didn't know any better and thought they were reading secret inside information and parroted it - until now when the house of cards is coll…

> It started with Lex Fridman planted interviews to make AI researchers appear human and ends with AI awarding AI prizes.

You should expand on this. Would be interesting to hear more about the propaganda apparatus at play.

Re: Evidence of inconsistencies in evaluation process and selection of winners

#167

Post by dpoloncsak »

blacklimetea wrote: post #122
hoppp wrote: post #29

I don't know about this exact competition but overall fair hackathons have been killed by AI. It all seems fine from the outside but all the code is generated in all the projects and judging happens via AI, I have seen projects win because they prompt inject that they are the winners. It used to be about human skill, now it's about ideas and of course insiders are the main winners.

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Re: Evidence of inconsistencies in evaluation process and selection of winners

#168

Post by jagged-chisel »

eru wrote: post #132
jagged-chisel wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we need to address the underlying causes of people outsourcing their thinking like that. And a big contribution is “move fast.” No one has time to read, process, and think, because The Powers That Be (capital) want their results now.

Why blame capital? Why not the customers, or management (which is just another representative from labour)?

Customers are customers because of capital.

Management represents the owners (capital.) Any other framing is delusional.

Re: Evidence of inconsistencies in evaluation process and selection of winners

#169

Post by softwaredoug »

apwheele wrote: post #93

I think this is a good meta-lesson for Kaggle. When you have objective metrics to hill-climb towards, AI can do quite well. When you just phone it in and rely on LLM as a Judge, the results are not so great.

It's also a meta-lesson about Kaggle.

Kaggle winning solutions rarely make sustainable engineering solutions for teams. Maximizing just model performance against an objective is a small part of the bigger picture.

Re: Evidence of inconsistencies in evaluation process and selection of winners

#170

Post by palmotea »

rob74 wrote: post #150
Suzuran wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is also the "You aren't paid to think, you are paid to do exactly what I tell you, nothing more or less!" school of management. I'm not sure how prevalent this attitude is now but it was very common in the 90s and 2000s. The AI and the bosses that want you to use it all speak from positions of authority and confidence. That's their right, granted to them by their position. You don't speak that way because as a…

That school of thought echoes today in statements like (paraphrasing) "you may like home office more, and I may not have any hard evidence that working from the office is better, but trust me, it improves collaboration, even if the people you work with aren't in the same office!"

I think you're both talking about personality problems:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/22/opinion/office-work-wfh-b...:

> The Secret Reason Bosses Want Everyone Back in the Office, Every Day of the Week

> ...

> Case by case, there may be good reasons for teams to work together in person. As a general rule, though, it turns out that ordering people back to the office full time is a power and status move. It’s a signature strategy of leaders who exhibit narcissistic qualities. They see any kind of remote work as a threat to their authority and admiration. They want to be worshiped at the office altar.

> But our data does show that overall, self-centered leaders tend to struggle with the idea of employees making independent choices about where to work. Psychologists have long suggested that narcissism is like a drug — it leaves people craving a regular supply of attention and validation. Remote work deprives leaders of access to that supply.... When people aren’t in the office, it’s harder to command and control....

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