Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AI boosts research careers but narrow the span of ideas explored: study

spectrum.ieee.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 112 posts

Re: AI boosts research careers but narrow the span of ideas explored: study

#31

Post by Arainach »

spongebobstoes wrote: post #26
Arainach wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is significantly more permanent. LLMs are autocomplete generators based off current context, and training generations of people to always ask the planet burners instead of learning to think for themselves - and never having the experience of having to slowly think over the same thing for an extended period - may well mean a permanent cap to human knowledge and a dramatic slowdown or end to new knowledge.

when a parent answers their child's question, does it decrease the curiosity of the child? many children have an unlimited capacity to ask "why?". many adults are the same if the abilities of AI are finite, then we will continue to have burning curiosity, questions to ask, and discoveries to make

> when a parent answers their child's question, does it decrease the curiosity of the child?

When the child is able to go to YouTube and find a tutorial rather than having to puzzle it out, yes, it absolute does. We've seen this for decades now.

Re: AI boosts research careers but narrow the span of ideas explored: study

#32

Post by dahart »

> Scientists who adopt AI gain productivity and visibility: On average, they publish three times as many papers, receive nearly five times as many citations, and become team leaders a year or two earlier than those who do not.

To me this effect doesn’t seem to reflect on AI very much, it seems to reflect on humans. Like maybe this is more evidence of the Babble Hypothesis and the incentives in research than AI, no?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babble_hypothesis

Re: AI boosts research careers but narrow the span of ideas explored: study

#33

Post by Arainach »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #24
Arainach wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is significantly more permanent. LLMs are autocomplete generators based off current context, and training generations of people to always ask the planet burners instead of learning to think for themselves - and never having the experience of having to slowly think over the same thing for an extended period - may well mean a permanent cap to human knowledge and a dramatic slowdown or end to new knowledge.

You act like humanity doesn't exist in a competitive environment. If you think AI codegen is a mistake? Just relax, keep writing code by hand and wait for the pendulum to prove you right while showering you in wealth. There are plenty of people making this bet, and I wish the best of luck to you because I'm 99% certain you're on the losing end of it.

The market can remain irrational longer than any of us can remain solvent. The market is not any good at strategic or long-term thinking, particularly if it takes a generation to realize the scope of the damage, as seen by America abandoning its ability to manufacture things in chase of short term profits.

Re: AI boosts research careers but narrow the span of ideas explored: study

#34

Post by Jtarii »

spongebobstoes wrote: post #26
Arainach wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is significantly more permanent. LLMs are autocomplete generators based off current context, and training generations of people to always ask the planet burners instead of learning to think for themselves - and never having the experience of having to slowly think over the same thing for an extended period - may well mean a permanent cap to human knowledge and a dramatic slowdown or end to new knowledge.

when a parent answers their child's question, does it decrease the curiosity of the child? many children have an unlimited capacity to ask "why?". many adults are the same if the abilities of AI are finite, then we will continue to have burning curiosity, questions to ask, and discoveries to make

There is two different types of learning people are talking about.

The first type happens when you are enthusiastically engaged in a topic, which LLMs will likely enhance.

The second type happens as a by-product of solving a, perhaps deeply uncomfortably, difficult problem. This is what people are talking about when they say LLMs will hamper human cognition. Instead of sitting there for an hour and struggling, people will instead reflexively give in and ask an LLM to solve it for them.

Re: AI boosts research careers but narrow the span of ideas explored: study

#35

Post by adalacelove »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #24
Arainach wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is significantly more permanent. LLMs are autocomplete generators based off current context, and training generations of people to always ask the planet burners instead of learning to think for themselves - and never having the experience of having to slowly think over the same thing for an extended period - may well mean a permanent cap to human knowledge and a dramatic slowdown or end to new knowledge.

You act like humanity doesn't exist in a competitive environment. If you think AI codegen is a mistake? Just relax, keep writing code by hand and wait for the pendulum to prove you right while showering you in wealth. There are plenty of people making this bet, and I wish the best of luck to you because I'm 99% certain you're on the losing end of it.

The very point of the article is that you can win individually and lose as a colective, and that the competitive nature of the field goes against the greater good. And the people betting against AI will be ripped off.

Re: AI boosts research careers but narrow the span of ideas explored: study

#36

Post by ianm218 »

bwfan123 wrote: post #13

> AI is largely automating the most tractable parts of science rather than expanding its frontiers By definition, creativity cannot be automated, and AI is a fantastic automation machine. It can explore thinking paths at a rate humans cannot match. But creativity is bringing the unthinkable into the thinkable, and that requires sensory experience [1]. Specifically, new definitions and symbols which never existed befo…

> LLMs are permanently trapped in the vector space they are trained on.

A lot of the time people state the kind of fundamental limitations of LLMs very confidently when it feels like it is too early for people to really know. Like we are already well past the point where where LLMs are just pre trains on the internet with some RLHF for chatbot… Most of the effort is spent on elaborate reinforcement learning.

Is it unconceivable that future generations of LLMs could be RL’d to use einsteins visual method for theories [1] with the right tooling and geometry representations? Or just something random like that.

[1]. https://www.visualscribing.com/blog/2019-11-11-einstein-on-v...

Re: AI boosts research careers but narrow the span of ideas explored: study

#37

Post by spongebobstoes »

Jtarii wrote: post #34
spongebobstoes wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

when a parent answers their child's question, does it decrease the curiosity of the child? many children have an unlimited capacity to ask "why?". many adults are the same if the abilities of AI are finite, then we will continue to have burning curiosity, questions to ask, and discoveries to make

There is two different types of learning people are talking about. The first type happens when you are enthusiastically engaged in a topic, which LLMs will likely enhance. The second type happens as a by-product of solving a, perhaps deeply uncomfortably, difficult problem. This is what people are talking about when they say LLMs will hamper human cognition. Instead of sitting there for an hour and struggling, people…

it's an interesting point. is it worthwhile to struggle through an incidental task that has been solved before? we all stand on the shoulders of giants

I think in most cases, understanding is the point. we don't expect students to derive general relativity before doing astrophysics. re-invention is only a tool for understanding

Re: AI boosts research careers but narrow the span of ideas explored: study

#38

Post by goldenarm »

skeledrew wrote: post #9

As with other fields touched, AI is merely amplifying what was already there. The aim of many scientists isn't discovery in and of itself. Discovery is a side effect of their primary drive to publish and - hopefully - become well known. And establishments only make things worse, because it's the things that are most likely to produce tangible results (the papers, or economically valuable products) that get the most f…

100% agree. You could make the same argument for Hollywood : funding & revenue was always the goal, and we've been producing slop before AI was even a thing

Re: AI boosts research careers but narrow the span of ideas explored: study

#39

Post by throw94949499 »

skeledrew wrote: post #9

As with other fields touched, AI is merely amplifying what was already there. The aim of many scientists isn't discovery in and of itself. Discovery is a side effect of their primary drive to publish and - hopefully - become well known. And establishments only make things worse, because it's the things that are most likely to produce tangible results (the papers, or economically valuable products) that get the most f…

You could also argue the opposite:

The aim of many scientists is discovery, publishing is a side chore to survive and to get funding. Automate paperwork and you get more time for discovering.

Post reply on HN