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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

#201

Post by GlibMonkeyDeath »

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.

There is a reason this exists: https://xkcd.com/793/

I sadly share this as a physicist. To be fair, sometimes this arrogance can be useful. I worked at the boundary between domains my entire career where there aren't "experts" per se. But yeah, barging into an established domain without some humility generally leads to embarrassment - especially Nobel winners (e.g. https://www.newsweek.com/nobel-prize-winner-who-doesnt-belie...)

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

#202

Post by jcmontx »

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…

This resonates a lot with me. I'm the CTO of a software factory-ish company. I get daily emails from clients running our decisions through LLMs and asking for ridiculous stuff that would multiply the implementation cost for them, just because Claude said so. No, your 3 users app doesn't need to be SOC2 compliant. No, of course we don't have triple zone redundancy while you're paying a 50 USD AWS bill.

Most of the time, these are just concerns triggered by chatting by an over-zealous LLM; in the worst cases, they are demands.

I'm usually able to clear concerns and disarticulate the LLM by explaining to customers how much more expensive everything would be if we did things like that. But it feels so frustrating, it's like you have to prove yourself everytime and justify every decision. These interactions have made me question my future in the industry, if I'm willing to keep dealing with these situations. I'm trying to foster patience in my life to cope with this.

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

#203

Post by wrsh07 »

PunchTornado wrote: post #153
wrsh07 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a truely bizarre claim. Imagine if one said: "Weather forecasts should be banned because they can never reach 100% accuracy"

Imagine writing an article in 5 days. Working hard. Posting it online and then everyone says it is ai and laughs and dismisses it because a tool says it is AI.

Imagine wasting several thousand people's time

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

#205

Post by 1euehe »

ticulatedspline wrote: post #114
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…

Isn't this basically the WebMD effect migrating to other domains? feels like the same lament doctors have had for ages after anyone could google their symptoms then self-diagnose. While AI is driving it the foundational cause feels like people having easy access to data/opinion that they trust but don't fully comprehend (or have bias towards). People do this in meat-space too, will confidently regurgitate garbage if…

Let’s be honest.

It’s always been present - e.g when I see people talking about finance on here with completely mangled fundamentals.

But now it’s amplified like crazy. We are going into a world where the geniuses will have to be isolated and protected from brain rot.

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

#206

Post by meowface »

teiferer wrote: post #166
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…

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

It is actually pretty much without problems. It doesn't catch everything, but if it detects something it's very rarely a false positive.

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

#207

Post by meowface »

teiferer wrote: post #193
wrsh07 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

Have you actually read the article? They point out multiple times that they like the Waymo ride and would use one again and loved it. It's not a Waymo-bashing article, it cautions against the long term effects on research. And here you have it — I used an LLM-ism. Oh, and now another one! Time to downvote me for supposed LLM use! (Which I obviously didn't, I'm typing this on an ancient smartphone waiting for a train,…

You actually didn't. The construct is slightly different.

I use LLMs all day every day. I think they're great. I just don't like humans who put their name to what an LLM did.

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

#208

Post by chunky1994 »

fidotron wrote: post #187
chunky1994 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there is a difference between not listening to experience and examining whether the resulting implementation/decisions based on the experience are actually valid. I doubt that someone smart (as you put it) would deliberately want things redone because they don't understand it, that's a trait borne of arrogance not intelligence. At least in my experience (as a physics grad), me and all my fellow grads are much mor…

> I doubt that someone smart (as you put it) would deliberately want things redone because they don't understand it You're actually doing the problem behavior right here: denying the validity of the experience of seeing exactly this happen, not as a one off, but repeatedly in completely separate situations and institutions. > that's a trait borne of arrogance not intelligence. I mean the problem is they're arrogant.…

My point is that wanting things redone because you don’t understand it is dumb behaviour, not smart behaviour.

There wasn’t even a denial of the validity of experience, I was just trying to examine the problem - if this behaviour is something you see often exhibited by “smart” people then: either you are unable to convince them of your side of the argument for different reasons, or you are not actually arguing with smart people. Do you see the distinction?

> The two aren't mutually exclusive, far from it.

Intelligence and arrogance are somewhat contra-indicative. While you can be intelligent and arrogant, you can’t really learn things without the humility to say you don’t know stuff. In my experience, most physics grads I know constantly say they don’t know stuff, way more than people from other disciplines.

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

#209

Post by NichoPaolucci »

tacomonstrous wrote: post #128
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.

As a mathematician, this is far from my experience of actual professional mathematicians, because they encounter people much smarter than them quite often. Maybe more true among graduate students, however.

The best/smartest professionals I meet operate this way (because we know we're wrong quite a bit and don't know everything). It's definitely a personality trait. Inquisitive, curious, intelligent, but also there's some metacognition involved where we can be confident in what we do NOT know.

In contrast, I studied chemical engineering for a short stint. First year, first semester chemistry classes and labs were riddled with these types of students. Tell you you're wrong, IQ 197, scoff when you ask a question, etc...

Listen, if you're the smartest person alive that's fantastic, but please don't talk down to me or the mere mortals that I prefer to hang around with. We get along much better and have a lot more fun saying "I don't know, let's find out".

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

#210

Post by meowface »

teiferer wrote: post #196
meowface wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you check my comment history here, I have not written this before. I like LLMs and use them daily, but I don't really like when people use them undisclosed for long-form prose writing.

Me neither, but just running around accusing random folks of things is not going to help. To the contrary. If a real author doing real work with a lot of effort risks being accused of things they didn't do and just dismissed, you'll get less of genuine content, not more.

I will donate $100 to charity if I made a false accusation.

(It's possible AI rewrote an article first written by a human here or whatever, but the point is that I can just tell this is mostly or entirely LLM output.)

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