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If you do enough measurements on that new prompt then I don't see why this shouldn't be a paper. People overestimate the value of "grand developments", and unde

If you do enough measurements on that new prompt then I don't see why this shouldn't be a paper. People overestimate the value of "grand developments", and underestimate the value of actually knowing - in this case actually knowing how well something works, even if it is as simple as a prompt. Compare with drug trials: Adderall only differs from regular amphetamine in the relative concentration of enantiomers, and the entire value of the drug is in the measurements.

aleph_minus_one 3y ago
> People overestimate the value of "grand developments", and underestimate the value of actually knowing - in this case actually knowing how well something works, even if it is as simple as a prompt. I think this depends a lot on the "culture" of the subject area. For example in mathematics, it is common that only new results that have been thoroughly worked through are typically "publish-worthy".
- brookst 3y ago
  Wouldn’t the “thoroughly worked through” part be analogous to extensive measurements of a prompt?
  - aleph_minus_one 3y ago
    Let me put it this way: you can expect that a typical good math paper means working on the problem for, I would say, half a year (often much longer). I have a feeling that most papers that involve extensive measurements of prompts do not involve 1/2 to 1 year of careful - hypothesis building - experimental design - doing experiments - analyzing the experimental results - doing new experiments - analyzing in which sense the collected data support the hypothesis or not - ... work.
starbugs 3y ago
> Compare with drug trials: Adderall only differs from regular amphetamine in the relative concentration of enantiomers, and the entire value of the drug is in the measurements. Drug trials may be expected to be somewhat reproducible. What I don't get is how it can even be called research if it cannot be expected to be reproducible at all! GPT is a closed source/weights, proprietary product that changes every couple of weeks or so. How can you expect a prompt to do the same for a reasonable length of time for the research to be even rudimentarily reproducible? And if it's not reproducible, what is it actually worth? I don't think much. Could as well have been a fault in the research setup or a fake.
- IanCal 3y ago
  > GPT is a closed source/weights, proprietary product that changes every couple of weeks or so. Do you have any evidence that the weights for versioned models are being changed without notifications?
  - starbugs 3y ago
    > Do you have any evidence that the weights for versioned models are being changed without notifications? I think in a real scientific process, it's upon those who claim that they are not to provide the evidence.
    - IanCal 3y ago
      I'm sorry, but that's entirely ridiculous. You're mangling up a concept of burden of proof here. You can easily see this because it can be flipped around easily - you made a claim that they are being changed, even every few weeks! Should it really be on me to show that your very specific claim is false? Aside - but even if the model weights did change, that wouldn't stop research being possible. Otherwise no drug trial could be replicated because you couldn't get the exact same participants at the exact same age.
      - dartos 3y ago
        Apples and oranges comparison. You couldn’t get the same participants, but you could get the same drugs. If you could get identical participants, that wouldn’t be very helpful since humans are so varied. But for GPT based papers, what you’re actually testing could change without you knowing. There’s no way to know if a paper is reproducible at all. If you can’t reproduce results, is it really research, or just show and tell?
        mewpmewp2 3y ago
        With API you can choose versions fixed to a date. Are you suggesting that OpenAI is lying about these being fixed to a date? Why would they lie about it? The whole point of these versions is so that when you build on top of that it would keep working as you expect.
VoodooJuJu 3y ago
There's a great lesson here for marketers: the prospect can be convinced with the simple presence of graphs and data and measurements. Even just the mere presence of data and data visuals is enough to legitimize what you're selling in the eyes of the prospect. When the prevailing religion is Scientism, data bestows that blessing of authority and legitimacy upon whatever it is you're trying to sell. Show and tell whatever conclusions you'd like from the data - the soundness of the logic supporting that conclusion is irrelevant. All that matters is you did the ritual of measuring and data-gathering and graph-ifying and putting it on display for the prospect. There's a great book, How to Lie with Statistics, that covers this particular case, but demonstrates other popular ways in which data and data visuals are manipulated to sell things.
- kridsdale1 3y ago
  Having worked at famously data driven Meta and Google, this is 100% accurate. You can turbo boost your career by mastering the art of “data ritual”. It doesn’t matter what the results are or magnitude of impact or what it cost to build and launch something. Show your results in a pretty way that looks like you did your diligence and you will be celebrated.
nathanfig 3y ago
Agreed. People publish papers on algorithms all the time, imagine saying "Sorry, but new C++ is not a paper". There is a ton of space to be explored wrt prompts. If you do the rigor on why something really is interesting, publish it.
oasisbob 3y ago
> and the entire value of the drug is in the measurements. I'm not sure this is true. While modern Adderall has a closely controlled mixture of multiple enantiomers, it hasn't always been this way. Medicine historically didn't care nearly as much about racemic mixtures, and the possibility of stereo toxicity (eg Thalidomide). Many drugs in modern human history, including mixed amphetamine salts, have been marketed with very little concern for racemic purity.

aleph_minus_one 3y ago

> People overestimate the value of "grand developments", and underestimate the value of actually knowing - in this case actually knowing how well something works, even if it is as simple as a prompt. I think this depends a lot on the "culture" of the subject area. For example in mathematics, it is common that only new results that have been thoroughly worked through are typically "publish-worthy".

brookst 3y ago
Wouldn’t the “thoroughly worked through” part be analogous to extensive measurements of a prompt?
- aleph_minus_one 3y ago
  Let me put it this way: you can expect that a typical good math paper means working on the problem for, I would say, half a year (often much longer). I have a feeling that most papers that involve extensive measurements of prompts do not involve 1/2 to 1 year of careful - hypothesis building - experimental design - doing experiments - analyzing the experimental results - doing new experiments - analyzing in which sense the collected data support the hypothesis or not - ... work.

starbugs 3y ago

> Compare with drug trials: Adderall only differs from regular amphetamine in the relative concentration of enantiomers, and the entire value of the drug is in the measurements. Drug trials may be expected to be somewhat reproducible. What I don't get is how it can even be called research if it cannot be expected to be reproducible at all! GPT is a closed source/weights, proprietary product that changes every couple of weeks or so. How can you expect a prompt to do the same for a reasonable length of time for the research to be even rudimentarily reproducible? And if it's not reproducible, what is it actually worth? I don't think much. Could as well have been a fault in the research setup or a fake.

IanCal 3y ago
> GPT is a closed source/weights, proprietary product that changes every couple of weeks or so. Do you have any evidence that the weights for versioned models are being changed without notifications?
- starbugs 3y ago
  > Do you have any evidence that the weights for versioned models are being changed without notifications? I think in a real scientific process, it's upon those who claim that they are not to provide the evidence.
  - IanCal 3y ago
    I'm sorry, but that's entirely ridiculous. You're mangling up a concept of burden of proof here. You can easily see this because it can be flipped around easily - you made a claim that they are being changed, even every few weeks! Should it really be on me to show that your very specific claim is false? Aside - but even if the model weights did change, that wouldn't stop research being possible. Otherwise no drug trial could be replicated because you couldn't get the exact same participants at the exact same age.
    - dartos 3y ago
      Apples and oranges comparison. You couldn’t get the same participants, but you could get the same drugs. If you could get identical participants, that wouldn’t be very helpful since humans are so varied. But for GPT based papers, what you’re actually testing could change without you knowing. There’s no way to know if a paper is reproducible at all. If you can’t reproduce results, is it really research, or just show and tell?
      - mewpmewp2 3y ago
        With API you can choose versions fixed to a date. Are you suggesting that OpenAI is lying about these being fixed to a date? Why would they lie about it? The whole point of these versions is so that when you build on top of that it would keep working as you expect.

VoodooJuJu 3y ago

There's a great lesson here for marketers: the prospect can be convinced with the simple presence of graphs and data and measurements. Even just the mere presence of data and data visuals is enough to legitimize what you're selling in the eyes of the prospect. When the prevailing religion is Scientism, data bestows that blessing of authority and legitimacy upon whatever it is you're trying to sell. Show and tell whatever conclusions you'd like from the data - the soundness of the logic supporting that conclusion is irrelevant. All that matters is you did the ritual of measuring and data-gathering and graph-ifying and putting it on display for the prospect. There's a great book, How to Lie with Statistics, that covers this particular case, but demonstrates other popular ways in which data and data visuals are manipulated to sell things.

kridsdale1 3y ago
Having worked at famously data driven Meta and Google, this is 100% accurate. You can turbo boost your career by mastering the art of “data ritual”. It doesn’t matter what the results are or magnitude of impact or what it cost to build and launch something. Show your results in a pretty way that looks like you did your diligence and you will be celebrated.

nathanfig 3y ago

Agreed. People publish papers on algorithms all the time, imagine saying "Sorry, but new C++ is not a paper". There is a ton of space to be explored wrt prompts. If you do the rigor on why something really is interesting, publish it.

oasisbob 3y ago

> and the entire value of the drug is in the measurements. I'm not sure this is true. While modern Adderall has a closely controlled mixture of multiple enantiomers, it hasn't always been this way. Medicine historically didn't care nearly as much about racemic mixtures, and the possibility of stereo toxicity (eg Thalidomide). Many drugs in modern human history, including mixed amphetamine salts, have been marketed with very little concern for racemic purity.