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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

#91

Post by mosura »

watwut wrote: post #87
mosura wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So basically you don’t understand english and/or don’t have the life experience to understand the context of the article. But you are very angry about it. Being able to avoid people like you is the entire selling point. No wonder it annoys you.

I am not angry about article. I am saying that following claims are bullshit: 1.) the primary use and appeal of AI is to use it to avoid the negative side effects imposed on you by other people. 2.) people with the biggest problems with AI are those that survive by imposing themselves on others in unnecessary ways 3.) so many bureaucrats are so enthused about regulating it. The article car example was stupid nonsense…

You have proved my point beautifully.

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

#92

Post by nicce »

scronkfinkle wrote: post #12
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".)

I wanted you to be wrong, and to be able to make this an example of us over-reacting to certain trigger words created by AI, but unfortunately I just scanned the first couple paragraphs with pangram and it reported 100% AI, so you're probably correct. I get a funny feeling in my stomach over the idea that common and effective means of communication (i.e. it's not X it's Y) have become faux pas to use because of AI. I…

All these "is this AI" checkers should be banned, as they never can reach 100% accuracy.

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

#93

Post by 01100011 »

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…

Idk, seems like overconfidence outside your domain really got going in the '00s and is largely perpetrated by SWEs.

Something about making a lot of money and living in a world of abstractions really seems to fuel our sense of overconfidence in our abilities in other areas.

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

#94

Post by Cribalis »

I think the problem is the same as with any technology: used correctly it adds value, used incorrectly it subtracts from it.

LLMs can massively speed up a process, but without control they can turn into social "sources of truth." A research process has well-defined, well-founded phases: you delimit the topic, search for sources, evaluate whether they're suitable, review their content, and place them on the map of the subject. The more sources, the greater the knowledge, and the better the final result — mental, or in the form of a report — is built. For that you have to read, and reread, and think, connect, relate, and conclude.

AI can do all of those steps faster than a human. But if we let it do the entire job on its own, its own way, with no checks at each stage, the conclusions can end up distorted. If we know what we want it to do and how we want it done, and we put the mechanisms in place to enforce that, the result is different — better, more reliable. It's worth remembering: it's just a tool, nothing more.

The wording of this comment in English has been corrected with AI, I don't have enough fluency to express myself clearly, but I do review the final result. In this case it got the verb tenses wrong, I saw it clearly, but the AI didn't understand it, it took me several instructions to explain it so it would understand. It's a tool, without supervision it can lead to problems, but it has expanded the world for a lot of people.

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

#95

Post by skinfaxi »

acomjean wrote: post #80
conductr wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Its snark/stereotype, but there is some truth. But my take, is physics sort of took over a lot of chemistry, biology.. and to them its the answer to all questions, because in the end it just molecules. There is some truth to that but..

Obligatory xkcd, everything is math. https://xkcd.com/435/

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

#96

Post by oblio »

simianwords wrote: post #81
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…

I think it is amazing and it will democratise information. A lot of times the concept ends up being simple with a lot of jargon exists as a gatekeeping method. Well of course the incumbents wouldn't like that rando from outside gets to understand and speak about things they worked on for many years. Sure he doesn't get it right 100% but he's in the correct direction.

Awesome, now balance that out will education levels dropping like a rock, due to various factor but also due to LLMs, and things will be balanced out by also democratizing stupidity, until we live in Idiocracy.

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

#97

Post by fidotron »

torginus wrote: post #84
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…

> 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, with conviction. Oh my god, physicist code is evolving!

It's a tough call but I'm not sure if physicist code or electronic engineer code is more frightening.

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

#98

Post by neutronicus »

fidotron wrote: post #89
conductr wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Physics, and to a large degree pure mathematics, has attracted a critical mass of the personality type that needs to feel like the smartest person in the room in any given situation. It has given them a slightly notorious reputation in academia.

From a one-time physics grad student, I do think there advantages to being ... like this.

The flip side of being confidently wrong sometimes is that we treat understanding new systems as something approachable. So, yeah, it's annoying that we don't stay in our lane, but, from my boss's perspective, I'm the only one who's actually willing to just read code, investigate, possibly read a paper, and figure out what's going on instead of punting and saying it's someone else's turf I'm blocked until they get back to me.

Like, ultimately you can't be a knowledge worker by just waiting for answers and instruction from experts and relaying them back and forth. Eventually you have to understand something. And part of that process is being wrong and annoying people.

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

#99

Post by EGreg »

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…

I try to do the opposite. However, I do battle test ideas against LLMs a lot, as well as humans. The experts have very limited access and availability:

https://magarshak.com/blog/why-im-confident-in-my-views/

The LLMs are trained to often be more pessimistic off the bat than the humans. But you can wear them down with arguments and they change their mind.

Here is an example where I have pushed my ideas in areas where I am not an expert, and generated papers to submit to conferences in order to get them peer reviewed BY experts: https://magarshak.com/papers.html

This is exactly what you’re talking about, except done very carefully.

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

#100

Post by nicce »

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".)

I think that in the end it does not matter, anymore. It is inevitable that most of the text now and in the future is at least reviewed by LLM.

We should criticize whether text is poorly written, inaccurate, wastes words to get to the point and anything like. Saying that it is "written by LLM" just bypasses this and is not useful and misses the point. AI written text can be really good if used correctly. Criticize the content, don't speculate how it was written. If AI helps us to write better text, that is great. But often it is not good.

It is better blame the author for the bad text, so they get consequences and might do better next time, if the text is bad.

By the way, I think this piece of text was quite good.

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