6 ms·

I'm fine with and approve the usage of LLMs in academia, as long as they provide genuine value and something new to the field. These tools should be embraced wh

I'm fine with and approve the usage of LLMs in academia, as long as they provide genuine value and something new to the field. These tools should be embraced when they can augment human intellect. However, I draw a firm line at using them to generate complete academic works or nonsensical content, as that undermines the integrity of research and renders it devoid of originality. LLMs should serve as invaluable assistants to free up scholars for higher-order analysis, not as replacements for human ingenuity.

regularfry 3y ago
The problem here is not necessarily the use of chatgpt at all. It's that academic idiom requires content-free linguistic noise for acceptance, and people are quite naturally turning to mechanistic routes to automate out the drudgery.
rich_sasha 3y ago
IMO academic papers are too long. The decorum dictates that a core of real, novel content must be surrounded in tons of fluff. Most people don't ever read that fluff (some do, and it's not totally useless, but not to most people). It doesn't actually bother me if some of that fluff is ChatGPT-generated, provided the author actually read it and accepts the autogenerated content. But better still, cut the fluff.
- anal_reactor 3y ago
  I'm having flashbacks from writing my Master's thesis. The experimental part was done in two weeks, then I spent a week describing the results, then a few months going from 15 pages to 80 pages and at least 30 citations, with the latter being surprisingly difficult because of uniqueness of my research topic.
CuriouslyC 3y ago
Buckle up, because we're not far away from autonomous research agents. It'll start with computational analysis, plot generation and creation of data discovery documents, but soon models will learn how to request simple physical experiments (sequencing some DNA, mass spec a sample, etc) and plan research based around the outcome.
- fennecbutt 3y ago
  Which will be so amazing. But there is already ai running physical experiments: https://youtu.be/L1UgdoP2aeg https://youtu.be/L1UgdoP2aeg But it has been done for at lest a decade or so I think
rchaud 3y ago
You may as well say that you only want dynamite to be used for nonviolent purposes, like demolishing condemned buildings. It doesn't work that way, which is exactly what AI ethicists and researchers have been warning about - AI should be regulated, because once its in somebody's hands, you don't control how they use it, and the repercussions could be much wider than people imagine.

regularfry 3y ago

The problem here is not necessarily the use of chatgpt at all. It's that academic idiom requires content-free linguistic noise for acceptance, and people are quite naturally turning to mechanistic routes to automate out the drudgery.

rich_sasha 3y ago

IMO academic papers are too long. The decorum dictates that a core of real, novel content must be surrounded in tons of fluff. Most people don't ever read that fluff (some do, and it's not totally useless, but not to most people). It doesn't actually bother me if some of that fluff is ChatGPT-generated, provided the author actually read it and accepts the autogenerated content. But better still, cut the fluff.

anal_reactor 3y ago
I'm having flashbacks from writing my Master's thesis. The experimental part was done in two weeks, then I spent a week describing the results, then a few months going from 15 pages to 80 pages and at least 30 citations, with the latter being surprisingly difficult because of uniqueness of my research topic.

CuriouslyC 3y ago

Buckle up, because we're not far away from autonomous research agents. It'll start with computational analysis, plot generation and creation of data discovery documents, but soon models will learn how to request simple physical experiments (sequencing some DNA, mass spec a sample, etc) and plan research based around the outcome.

fennecbutt 3y ago
Which will be so amazing. But there is already ai running physical experiments: https://youtu.be/L1UgdoP2aeg https://youtu.be/L1UgdoP2aeg But it has been done for at lest a decade or so I think

rchaud 3y ago

You may as well say that you only want dynamite to be used for nonviolent purposes, like demolishing condemned buildings. It doesn't work that way, which is exactly what AI ethicists and researchers have been warning about - AI should be regulated, because once its in somebody's hands, you don't control how they use it, and the repercussions could be much wider than people imagine.