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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

#161

Post by teiferer »

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".)

Do you have more evidence than this? I'd honestly like to know.

I don't like AI slop like everybody else, but I'm also growing skeptical of the very fast determinations that sth is supposedly made by LLM just because it uses some phrase that Claude also uses. Models are trained on text written by human writers and if human text resembles it, this goes both ways. I have looked at the authors work from the pre-AI era and it reads similar to me.

So please, if you come with such a claim, please include what you base it on, so we all have a chance to determine how much to trust your verdict.

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

#162

Post by jltsiren »

dhbradshaw wrote: post #73
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?

It might be a reference to this: https://xkcd.com/793/

I prefer the SMBC version: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-03-21

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

#163

Post by moregrist »

conductr wrote: post #67
varjag wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It’s a very common experience that people in the physics-adjacent sciences have.

It’s so common that there’s an xkcd about it:

https://xkcd.com/793/

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

#164

Post by saghm »

conductr wrote: post #67
varjag wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It's common enough to have an xkcd for it at least (then again, what doesn't?) https://xkcd.com/793/

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

#165

Post by gowld »

Any indictment of LLM needs to distinguish LLM from pocket calculators and books. Calculators and books quietly made reasearch less collaborative.

Also, Waymo is an automated taxi service, so it's an exteremly misleading analogy. Taxis existed before Waymo.

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

#166

Post by teiferer »

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…

Have you also scanned earlier work of the author with pangram to establish a baseline? Pangram is not without problems.

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

#167

Post by crazygringo »

> The benefits are diffuse and deferred: the driver was, for many of us on many days, the last stranger we were obliged to encounter. The last person from outside our bubble – professionally, politically, socially – with whom we had an unchosen conversation. The last reliable source of a view we did not ask for.

This is a very strange take, to me.

I have conversations with cashiers, bartenders, servers, baristas, the random person in line in front of me or behind me, the person next to me on my flight (if they seem open to it), barbers, you name it.

I've had a handful of interesting conversations with cab drivers, but it's a tiny proportion of all my conversations with people "outside my bubble".

So I'm not really worried about this. The idea that cab drivers are somehow the last vestige of someone outside of your bubble is... bizarre to me.

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

#168

Post by noir_lord »

hgoel wrote: post #134
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 work at an intersection of tech, applied research and science. My experience has been different. It's been surprising how controlled my collaborators/coworkers have been with their reliance on AI. Sure, they use it a lot, but despite the stereotypes against physicists in some of the replies to you, they have shown a good ability to catch themselves before leaning too hard on what an LLM tells them about things…

> I also work at an intersection of tech, applied research and science. My experience has been different. It's been surprising how controlled my collaborators/coworkers have been with their reliance on AI.

It's similar to the pattern I've noticed with experienced programmers I know and respect, the really good ones do seem to use AI but they are deeply sceptical about its claimed capabilities so they check/verify/assess what it's good for and use it for that, the tier down is less questioning and just accepts whatever it generates as gospel and it seems to degenerate the further you go down.

It seems like as soon as the AI states something confidently and is wrong in the domain in which the user is an expert, it loses a lot of credibility and people become much more wary of it in general but that requires you to be able to see that it is wrong otherwise it becomes a "bullshit baffles brains" generator.

It's useful to remember those times you've seen it do that when you are asking it something you aren't an expert in and then verify it's answer a different way.

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

#169

Post by teiferer »

claiir wrote: post #159
teiferer wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Beautifully written essay. Agreed! Great flow, structure, no BS, really good! I would wager this didn't use LLM help to be written. Though if I'm wrong I'd really like to know and would be very impressed. (And if I'm right then the article is an illustration of its own message. You don't learn how to write such essays without having practised it for many years without opting for the easy way of letting the LLM do t…

From the post, “and the incentive structures we have built are the experimental apparatus.” That’s a Claude sentence.

What is "a Claude sentence"?

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

#170

Post by AlexandrB »

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".)

This rings more and more true every day: https://samkriss.substack.com/p/if-you-let-ai-do-your-writin...
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