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The Waymo effect: how AI is quietly making research less collaborative

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Re: The Waymo effect: how AI is quietly making research less collaborative

#61

Post by ModernMech »

embedding-shape wrote: post #19
meowface wrote: post #4

This article is written by an LLM, by the way. ("Quietly" is... as Claude might put it... "often the quiet tell".)

Which, given the section below from the article, ends up kind of ironic: > There is a deeper cost still, and it concerns the thing LLMs do most impressively: writing. [...] Outsource the writing and you have not accelerated the thinking; you have skipped it. I think the author might not know what "impressive writing" or even "good writing" is, which would explain both how they could put that part into the article, an…

> believed this post was good and valuable enough to be posted publicly.

I mean, it made it to the front page of HN didn't it? Probably served its purpose just fine. Not all writing is supposed to be impressive or good. Some of it is to just get attention and stir discussion, and this Claude output did exactly that.

Re: The Waymo effect: how AI is quietly making research less collaborative

#62

Post by bobajeff »

embedding-shape wrote: post #19
meowface wrote: post #4

This article is written by an LLM, by the way. ("Quietly" is... as Claude might put it... "often the quiet tell".)

Which, given the section below from the article, ends up kind of ironic: > There is a deeper cost still, and it concerns the thing LLMs do most impressively: writing. [...] Outsource the writing and you have not accelerated the thinking; you have skipped it. I think the author might not know what "impressive writing" or even "good writing" is, which would explain both how they could put that part into the article, an…

Interestingly that's the one point of the article I have a disagreement with. Yeah, good thinking comes when reformulating your ideas. Also, reformulating ideas is part of the traditional writing process. However it's does not necessarily focus writers/thinkers on the reformulating ideas in their most value adding form.

I've watched some YouTube videos narrated by AI that were created by those who's native language I assume to be Chinese but the value of the content is higher and more concentrated than those from the native speakers.

While I've watched many for whom English is not their first language struggle in technical talks and lose most of the meat if their discussion to their struggle with the language conversion.

While the example of language barriers being skipped over and providing value in that circumstance is obvious I suspect more is possible by avoiding unnecessarily focus on prose or technical aspects of communication and focusing on the ideas themselves.

Imagine if the cost of not assuming a background in technical/textbook writing were zero. Freeing up authors to explain more thoroughly. Perhaps, more effort can be spent on thinking up analogies, metaphor or examples to help communicate an idea.

Re: The Waymo effect: how AI is quietly making research less collaborative

#63

Post by prepend »

Frost1x wrote: post #32

I work at an intersection of tech, applied research, and science. Something I’ve noticed in collaboration that does occur is an increased confidence in people outside their domains to say things with conviction. I have people who have limited experience with software pushing out layers and layers of abstracted code that’s fairly sophisticated but often misguided in intent who will say what they’re doing is correct, w…

> It’s making me want to be a lot less collaborative with such individuals.

I have the same conclusion and am getting a growing list of mental blacklisted people who I just sort of ignore or greatly discount their efforts.

I suppose I always did this if people were time wasters but what used to be a tiny list of “idiots” is now getting much, much bigger. Hopefully it doesn’t grow to everyone I work with like an AI Nothing.

Re: The Waymo effect: how AI is quietly making research less collaborative

#65

Post by prepend »

wazoox wrote: post #11

I'm pretty baffled by people I hear here and there saying that AI is great because it saves them the hassle of human interaction. "I love Waymo, I don't have to chit-chat with the driver and bear his horrible music". Apparently people didn't get the memo : humans are social animals. Autonomous individuals simply don't exist. Nothing is entirely yours... And AI precisely builds upon that large availability of our comm…

> I love Waymo, I don't have to chit-chat with the driver and bear his horrible music

This is a reason I love Waymo. I don’t like talking with people and like avoiding it when possible.

There’s also may other, more important to me, reasons I like Waymo: they never cancel on me, their car doesn’t stink, no tipping (cheaper), not worrying about them rating me poorly.

Re: The Waymo effect: how AI is quietly making research less collaborative

#66

Post by prepend »

Forgeties79 wrote: post #27
wazoox wrote: post #11

I'm pretty baffled by people I hear here and there saying that AI is great because it saves them the hassle of human interaction. "I love Waymo, I don't have to chit-chat with the driver and bear his horrible music". Apparently people didn't get the memo : humans are social animals. Autonomous individuals simply don't exist. Nothing is entirely yours... And AI precisely builds upon that large availability of our comm…

A whole idea of a fleet of self driving cars for all of us to use just to further isolate ourselves and clog up our roads is just awful to me.

The same argument was made when elevator operators went away.

Some things work well with automation (taxis, washing machines, copy machines) while others work better with humans (chefs, masseuses).

50 years ago, I would have needed to dictate this note to a secretary who would distribute a memo. Does it further isolate ourselves that we can type and communicate directly? Would 1980 uses think it was awful to us?

Re: The Waymo effect: how AI is quietly making research less collaborative

#67

Post by conductr »

varjag wrote: post #41
Frost1x wrote: post #32

I work at an intersection of tech, applied research, and science. Something I’ve noticed in collaboration that does occur is an increased confidence in people outside their domains to say things with conviction. I have people who have limited experience with software pushing out layers and layers of abstracted code that’s fairly sophisticated but often misguided in intent who will say what they’re doing is correct, w…

Yup, the arrogance when barging into unfamiliar domain that was previously reserved mainly to physics grads seems to have spread everywhere. I also had people opining on my expert area via their LLMs and the problem is they can't even ask the model the right question, let alone evaluate the nuance of their answer.

As an unfamiliar, I find it interesting how you specifically called out physics grads in the pre-LLM era. Is that just snark or is there some widespread truth / stereotype of that behavior?

Re: The Waymo effect: how AI is quietly making research less collaborative

#68

Post by saltypixel »

spongebobstoes wrote: post #30
mosura wrote: post #3

There's a general point here which is that the primary use and appeal of AI is to use it to avoid the negative side effects imposed on you by other people. The flip side is the people with the biggest problems with AI are those that survive by imposing themselves on others in unnecessary ways, which is why so many bureaucrats are so enthused about regulating it.

using AI makes an individual more capable and empowered. this views AI as an accessible tool, like AWS or a nail gun individual empowerment threatens institutions

[flagged]

Re: The Waymo effect: how AI is quietly making research less collaborative

#69

Post by frank00001 »

Frost1x wrote: post #32

I work at an intersection of tech, applied research, and science. Something I’ve noticed in collaboration that does occur is an increased confidence in people outside their domains to say things with conviction. I have people who have limited experience with software pushing out layers and layers of abstracted code that’s fairly sophisticated but often misguided in intent who will say what they’re doing is correct, w…

[dead]

Re: The Waymo effect: how AI is quietly making research less collaborative

#70

Post by zzzeek »

Frost1x wrote: post #32

I work at an intersection of tech, applied research, and science. Something I’ve noticed in collaboration that does occur is an increased confidence in people outside their domains to say things with conviction. I have people who have limited experience with software pushing out layers and layers of abstracted code that’s fairly sophisticated but often misguided in intent who will say what they’re doing is correct, w…

it's hard to gauge this take without specifics. My experience with LLMs tends to be towards the opposite concept; LLMs dissuading me of hunches and notions I have about things (where I have no particular expertise; societal-level things), saving me and others time and strife having an argument about something they were actually right about all along, as my internal doubts that I'm too embarrassed to bring up (because these things aren't my field) are confirmed as incorrect.

I'd be curious to know specific examples of LLM-generated advice that goes against the advice of experts and does not consider tradeoffs. I've not had this experience myself.

If I did have this experience, someone spouting off obvious LLM points that contradict my expert opinion on something, I'd be headed right over to gemini/claude/whatever to see where that's coming from. Not any differently than if someone cited a google result that contradicted my own experience.

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