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The only reason it's a problem is that papers became the measure - more papers = more prestige. The measure will simply change because now it won't have a stron

by juve1996 3y ago

The only reason it's a problem is that papers became the measure - more papers = more prestige. The measure will simply change because now it won't have a strong signal.

burkaman 3y ago
That is not the only reason and it's not the most important reason. Papers are useful in the real world and people use them to learn stuff, and also reference them as evidence. If you're trying to learn about a topic and you have to wade through 90% bullshit AI papers when search for the topic, when you aren't experienced enough to immediately tell which papers are real, that's a problem. If malicious actors are able to spread disinformation that cites very real-looking research, or pitch journalists with very real-looking papers, that's a problem.
- juve1996 3y ago
  No, papers are not always useful. That isn't an inherent property. They can be useful. It depends on the content of the paper. If you can't tell whether a paper is real or bullshit it doesn't matter if an AI or a human created it. Journalists will, heaven forbid, have to do real journalism instead of blindly trusting some piece of paper they found somewhere.
  - burkaman 3y ago
    > If you can't tell whether a paper is real or bullshit it doesn't matter if an AI or a human created it. That's true, but now it's incredibly easy to create a human-quality bullshit paper. That wasn't true a year ago. It doesn't matter who created it, but it does matter how easy it was to create. > Journalists will, heaven forbid, have to do real journalism instead of blindly trusting some piece of paper they found somewhere. That's true, but now it's incredibly easy to generate a real-looking piece of paper and send it to a journalist, prompting them to spend a day doing real journalism to verify it. That wasn't true a year ago.
    - juve1996 3y ago
      > That's true, but now it's incredibly easy to create a human-quality bullshit paper. No, it's incredibly easy to create human-quality syntax. Not meaning. The source of the value was never the paper or the syntax - it was the meaning of the paper. Whether a human or an AI creates bullshit matters not.

The only reason it's a problem is that papers became the measure - more papers = more prestige. The measure will simply change because now it won't have a strong signal.

burkaman 3y ago

That is not the only reason and it's not the most important reason. Papers are useful in the real world and people use them to learn stuff, and also reference them as evidence. If you're trying to learn about a topic and you have to wade through 90% bullshit AI papers when search for the topic, when you aren't experienced enough to immediately tell which papers are real, that's a problem. If malicious actors are able to spread disinformation that cites very real-looking research, or pitch journalists with very real-looking papers, that's a problem.

juve1996 3y ago
No, papers are not always useful. That isn't an inherent property. They can be useful. It depends on the content of the paper. If you can't tell whether a paper is real or bullshit it doesn't matter if an AI or a human created it. Journalists will, heaven forbid, have to do real journalism instead of blindly trusting some piece of paper they found somewhere.
- burkaman 3y ago
  > If you can't tell whether a paper is real or bullshit it doesn't matter if an AI or a human created it. That's true, but now it's incredibly easy to create a human-quality bullshit paper. That wasn't true a year ago. It doesn't matter who created it, but it does matter how easy it was to create. > Journalists will, heaven forbid, have to do real journalism instead of blindly trusting some piece of paper they found somewhere. That's true, but now it's incredibly easy to generate a real-looking piece of paper and send it to a journalist, prompting them to spend a day doing real journalism to verify it. That wasn't true a year ago.
  - juve1996 3y ago
    > That's true, but now it's incredibly easy to create a human-quality bullshit paper. No, it's incredibly easy to create human-quality syntax. Not meaning. The source of the value was never the paper or the syntax - it was the meaning of the paper. Whether a human or an AI creates bullshit matters not.