4 ms·

I recall hearing "she saved everything for her doctoral thesis on that one floppy disk, and then..." warning stories back in the 1980's USA. Is anyone familiar

• slow_typist 9mo ago
  From my perspective as an employee of a German academic institution, administrations are still figuring out if and how to regulate the use of AI, while some professors rely pretty heavily on AI tools, so the story is completely believable. However the double naïveté demonstrated here is strange. Generation of boilerplate prose for grant applications was the beginning around 2023, which is absolutely understandable. The DFG recently allowed the use of AI for reviewers, too, to read an summarise the AI generated applications. Researchers using qualitative methods seem (in general) to be more sceptical. I wish we had an open debate about the implications instead of half assed institutional rules that will and must be widely ignored by researchers.
  • bell-cot 9mo ago
    Between the lines, it sounds like German academia doesn't bother to warn - formally or informally - its researchers that failing to have working backups can be a train wreck for their careers.
    • slow_typist 9mo ago
      At least I haven’t noticed otherwise.