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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

#101

Post by bunderbunder »

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.

I've experienced it in industry, too. I recently got out of data science in part because I got tired of working with people who, emboldened by their PhDs in some completely other field, liked to patiently but condescendingly mansplain common, basic misconceptions about my area of expertise to me.

(And it got so much worse once they started using LLMs to aid them in their efforts. Glazing as a service is a hell of a drug.)

So much easier, now that I am a lowly software engineer and can't be held responsible for a certain class of decisions, to just step back and let them be wrong.

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

#102

Post by wrsh07 »

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…

Fwiw, I only did the first 300 words (signed into pangram) and it seemingly correctly noted that there were 2 (mostly) human-authored sentences in there

What's wild to me is that:

1. People are responding to this article like it's hitting a nerve

2. In most Ubers you already don't talk to the driver (yellow cabs are higher variance in NYC). Doesn't seem like anything's being lost in that case.

3. There are enormous safety benefits to waymo, mobility benefits for youth (and elderly) that are afforded by this technology. It's not clear why people argue "Uber" is better than waymo. A few years ago there were arguments against Uber! (A technology which, again, provides a huge benefit, especially if you live in an area where people were previously expected to go out for drinks and then drive home)

I think it's fair to point out real issues at these companies. But we should be clear-eyed about which technologies we want to accelerate vs slow down

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

#103

Post by wrsh07 »

zamadatix wrote: post #53
scronkfinkle wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Pangram should be paying HNers for how often we pitch needing to use their product by name to believe things as obvious as "a long form news article cramming every AI trope it can fit from start to finish" being AI written. At this point I'm surprised when a news article isn't largely AI written, let alone one using the default tone! I don't even mind it as much as others seem to, it's just turning into more and more…

You have to name pangram because the other ai detectors are quite bad

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

#105

Post by zzzeek »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #88
zzzeek wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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 (becaus…

i had that experience with them a few years ago but not these days. The models are being improved constantly, so here my "non expert hunch" is that...well, two things. either the models are getting better at sycophancy, OR, I myself am getting better at prompting - because I don't "argue" with a model.

I'd still love to chew on some specific examples though.

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

#106

Post by wrsh07 »

nicce wrote: post #92
scronkfinkle wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is a truely bizarre claim. Imagine if one said:

"Weather forecasts should be banned because they can never reach 100% accuracy"

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

#107

Post by deadbabe »

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…

At some point, LLMs will be a far better source of truth, and then this distaste of people “outside their domains” is really just going to be a sort of snobbery from people who have had experience in a domain for a long time, (but they still have the same level of knowledge and insight as a person who just used an LLM to research).

These people are basically nascent “human supremacists”, who believe that only raw human insight and output has value, and is even superior, than equivalent output looked up and synthesized via LLM.

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

#108

Post by oniony »

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 also hear a lot more questioning people in their domains and challenging opinions, then hearing what I can only imagine are fragmented pieces of conversations they had with an LLM thinking through some argument. Then there’s silence when you discuss shortcomings, then they come back later with their memorized fragments of what you said, combined with memorized fragments of the LLM response to the argument."

We hired this guy recently.

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

#110

Post by grey-area »

neutronicus wrote: post #98
fidotron wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 goi…

It is quite possible to be wrong and not annoy people, and it's not even terribly difficult to learn. It does require a bit of humility and introspection though.

You don't have to not stray into areas you don't understand, but be humble when doing so - if you think something is being done in a stupid way, you probably don't understand it yet.

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