Can “AI” do your science for you? Should it be your co-author? Or, as one company asks, boldly and breathlessly, “Can we automate the entire process of research itself?”

Major scientific journals have banned the use of tools like ChatGPT in the writing of research papers. But people keep trying to make “AI Scientists” a thing. Just ask your chatbot for some research questions, or have it synthesize some human subjects to save you time on surveys.

Alex and Emily explain why so-called “fully automated, open-ended scientific discovery” can’t live up to the grandiose promises of tech companies. Plus, an update on their forthcoming book!

References:

Sakana.AI keeps trying to make 'AI Scientist' happen
- The AI Scientist: Towards Fully Automated Open-Ended Scientific Discovery

Can LLMs Generate Novel Research Ideas? A Large-Scale Human Study with 100+ NLP Researchers

How should the advent of large language models affect the practice of science?

Relevant research ethics policies:

ACL Policy on Publication Ethics

Committee On Public Ethics (COPE)

The Vancouver Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work

Fresh AI Hell:

Should journals allow LLMs as co-authors?

Business Insider "asks ChatGPT"

Otter.ai sends transcript of private after-meeting discussion to everyone

"Could AI End Grief?"

AI generated crime scene footage

"The first college of nursing to offer an MSN in AI"

FTC cracks down on "AI" claims

You can check out future streams at http://twitch.tv/dair_institute.

Follow Emily at https://twitter.com/EmilyMBender and https://dair-community.social/@EmilyMBender
Follow Alex at https://twitter.com/alexhanna and https://dair-community.social/@alex

Music: Toby Menon.
Production: Christie Taylor.
Graphic Design: Naomi Pleasure-Park.

Do you feel like this summer has brought just unending terrible ideas for how to use “AI”? You’re not alone! The time has come, yet again, for Emily and Alex to clear out the poison, purge some backlog, and take a journey through AI hell.

From surveillance of emotions...to continued hype around using 'AI' to automate the scientific process. But also, more promising, signs that people can see that the AI emperor is indeed without clothes.

Fresh AI Hell:

Synthetic data for Hollywood's test screenings

NaNoWriMo's AI fail
- But AI is built on classist exploitation
- NaNoWriMo is sponsored by an AI writing company
- NaNoWriMo's AI writing sponsor still creates bad writing

Company's AI assistant starts rickrolling customers

Programming LLMs with "fiduciary duty"

Canva increasing prices thank to "AI" features

Ad spending by AI companies

Clearview AI hit with largest GDPR fine yet, Dutch regulator considers holding execs personally liable

'AI detection' in schools harming neurodivergent kids

CS prof proudly stating unethical use of ChatGPT in the Atlantic

College recruiter chatbot can't "discuss politics"

"The AI-Powered Nonprofits Reimagining Education"

Teaching AI at art schools

Professors' 'AI twin' chatbots as teaching assistants

A teacherless AI classroom

Another 'AI Scientist'

LLMs still biased against African American English

AI "enhances" photo of Black people into photo of white-appearing people

Eric Schmidt says go ahead and steal data, write apps with ChatGPT

The environmental cost of Google's "AI Overviews"

A "Grand Challenge" for AI in climate and environment -- brought to you by Jeff Bezos

What I found in an AI-company's e-waste

Musk's xAI accused of worsening Memphise smog with unauthorized gas turbines at data center

Smile surveillance of workers

Rail carrier used AI for "emotion recognition" of passengers

Chatbot-generated harassment scenario reveals real harassment victim's personal information

AI Has Increased Workloads And Hampered Productivity

Survey says: "AI" in a product description makes people want to purchase it less

Is tripe kosher? It depends on the religion of the cow.

You can check out future streams at http://twitch.tv/dair_institute.

Follow Emily at https://twitter.com/EmilyMBender and https://dair-community.social/@EmilyMBender
Follow Alex at https://twitter.com/alexhanna and https://dair-community.social/@alex

Music: Toby Menon.
Production: Christie Taylor.
Graphic Design: Naomi Pleasure-Park.

Foone🏳️‍⚧️

2024-08-19 19:27:14

ugh. I picked up a shitty NUC from ewaste and it had a label on it for an AI company.
ahh, another startup that burnt out trying to build some silly AI project on crap hardware. I wonder what they did? I check their URL:
ahh. healthcare. great, great.

Dr. Clara Berridge joins Alex and Emily to talk about the many 'uses' for generative AI in elder care -- from "companionship," to "coaching" like medication reminders and other encouragements toward healthier (and, for insurers, cost-saving) behavior. But these technologies also come with questionable data practices and privacy violations. And as populations grow older on average globally, technology such as chatbots is often used to sidestep real solutions to providing meaningful care, while also playing on ageist and ableist tropes.

Dr. Clara Berridge is an associate professor at the University of Washington’s School of Social Work. Her research focuses explicitly on the policy and ethical implications of digital technology in elder care, and considers things like privacy and surveillance, power, and decision-making about technology use.

References:

Care.Coach's 'Avatar' chat program*

For Older People Who Are Lonely, Is the Solution a Robot Friend?

Care Providers’ Perspectives on the Design of Assistive Persuasive Behaviors for Socially Assistive Robots

****Care.Coach's 'Fara' and 'Auger' products, also discussed in this episode, are no longer listed on their site.*

Fresh AI Hell:

Apple Intelligence hidden prompts include the command "don't hallucinate"

The US wants to use facial recognition to identify migrant children as they age

Family poisoned after following fake mushroom book

It is a beautiful evening in the neighborhood, and you are a horrible Waymo robotaxi

Dynamic pricing + surveillance hell at the grocery store

Chinese social media's newest trend: imitating AI-generated videos

You can check out future streams at http://twitch.tv/dair_institute.

Follow Emily at https://twitter.com/EmilyMBender and https://dair-community.social/@EmilyMBender
Follow Alex at https://twitter.com/alexhanna and https://dair-community.social/@alex

Music: Toby Menon.
Production: Christie Taylor.
Graphic Design: Naomi Pleasure-Park.

The Washington Post is going all in on AI -- surely this won't be a repeat of any past, disastrous newsroom pivots! 404 Media journalist Samantha Cole joins to talk journalism, LLMs, and why synthetic text is the antithesis of good reporting.

References:

The Washington Post Tells Staff It’s Pivoting to AI: "AI everywhere in our newsroom."
Response: Defector Media Promotes Devin The Dugong To Chief AI Officer, Unveils First AI-Generated Blog

The Washington Post's First AI Strategy Editor Talks LLMs in the Newsroom

Also: New Washington Post CTO comes from Uber

The Washington Post debuts AI chatbot, will summarize climate articles.

Media companies are making a huge mistake with AI

When ChatGPT summarizes, it does nothing of the kind

Fresh AI Hell:

"AI" Alan Turning

Google advertises Gemini for writing synthetic fan letters

Dutch Judge uses ChatGPT's answers to factual questions in ruling

Is GenAI coming to your home appliances?

AcademicGPT (Galactica redux)

"AI" generated images in medical science, again (now retracted)

You can check out future streams at http://twitch.tv/dair_institute.

Follow Emily at https://twitter.com/EmilyMBender and https://dair-community.social/@EmilyMBender
Follow Alex at https://twitter.com/alexhanna and https://dair-community.social/@alex

Music: Toby Menon.
Production: Christie Taylor.
Graphic Design: Naomi Pleasure-Park.

Alex and Emily put on their social scientist hats and take on the churn of research papers suggesting that LLMs could be used to replace human labor in social science research -- or even human subjects. Why these writings are essentially calls to fabricate data.

References:

PNAS: ChatGPT outperforms crowd workers for text-annotation tasks
* Beware the Hype: ChatGPT Didn't Replace Human Data Annotators
* ChatGPT Can Replace the Underpaid Workers Who Train AI, Researchers Say

Political Analysis: Out of One, Many: Using Language Models to Simulate Human Samples

Behavioral Research Methods: Can large language models help augment English psycholinguistic datasets?

Information Systems Journal: Editorial: The ethics of using generative AI for qualitative data analysis

Fresh AI Hell:

Advertising vs. reality, synthetic Willy Wonka edition
* https://x.com/AlsikkanTV/status/1762235022851948668?s=20
* https://twitter.com/CultureCrave/status/1762739767471714379
* https://twitter.com/xriskology/status/1762891492476006491?t=bNQ1AQlju36tQYxnm8BPVQ&s=19

A news outlet used an LLM to generate a story...and it falsely quoted Emily
* AI Invents Quote From Real Person in Article by Bihar News Site: A Wake-Up Call?

Trump supporters target Black voters with faked AI images
* Seeking Reliable Election Information? Don’t Trust AI

You can check out future streams at http://twitch.tv/dair_institute.

Follow Emily at https://twitter.com/EmilyMBender and https://dair-community.social/@EmilyMBender
Follow Alex at https://twitter.com/alexhanna and https://dair-community.social/@alex

Music: Toby Menon.
Production: Christie Taylor.
Graphic Design: Naomi Pleasure-Park.

Yesterday I tried to setup my own version of OCRbot@fedi.lynnesbian.space, which does #OCR on pictures attached to posts on the #Fediverse, which I find an intriguing idea. During the process to set this up I was lazy and asked #ChatGPT to guide me through the whole process, which is fairly easy to be honest, but I an playing around with this #AI for fun.

I wanted to run the OCR #bot on my own #Friendica server, because I like to run on my own tech too.

So I asked Chatty to guide me and it worked well, I logged in with the Python bot and wanted to start it and got an API error, it was only then when I told ChatGPT that I am actually trying this with Frienidca and that the API might have its limits.
I then looked up the API documentation of the Mastodon API that Friendica implemented and asked ChatGPT if there is any essential parts missing that are needed to run the bot.

ChatGPT 'read' the documentation of both, the bot and the Mastodon API of Friendica and explained:
"Since Friendica doesn't support the Mastodon streaming API, the OCRbot, which relies on these endpoints, may not be compatible with Friendica without significant modifications to either the bot or the Friendica server."

Just wanted to write a bit about this experience with Friendica, the bot and ChatGPT.

Maybe I will setup a #Pleroma instance for this, a single user instance for me and the bot, maybe better a Mastodon instance?

cc !Friendica Support

Emily and Alex talk to UC Berkeley scholar Hannah Zeavin about the case of the National Eating Disorders Association helpline, which tried to replace human volunteers with a chatbot--and why the datafication and automation of mental health services are an injustice that will disproportionately affect the already vulnerable.

Content note: This is a conversation that touches on mental health, people in crisis, and exploitation.

Hannah Zeavin is a scholar, writer, and editor whose work centers on the history of human sciences (psychoanalysis, psychology, and psychiatry), the history of technology and media, feminist science and technology studies, and media theory. Zeavin is an Assistant Professor of the History of Science in the Department of History and The Berkeley Center for New Media at UC Berkeley. She is the author of, "The Distance Cure: A History of Teletherapy."

References:

VICE: Eating Disorder Helpline Fires Staff, Transitions to Chatbot After Unionization

… and then pulls the chatbot.

NPR: Can an AI chatbot help people with eating disorders as well as another human?

Psychiatrist.com: NEDA suspends AI chatbot for giving harmful eating disorder advice

Politico: Suicide hotline shares data with for-profit spinoff, raising ethical questions

Danah Boyd: Crisis Text Line from my perspective.

Tech Workers Coalition: Chatbots can't care like we do.

Slate: Who's listening when you call a crisis hotline? Helplines and the carceral system.

Hannah Zeavin: The Third Choice: Suicide Hotlines, Psychiatry, and the Police

New York Times hype: Using "AI" to diagnose mental disorders based on voice recordings, April 2022

Fresh AI Hell:

ChatGPT for city government work
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/06/06/national/yokosuka-adopts-chatgpt/

ChatGPT as manuscript pre-screener for publishing companies:
https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/digital/content-and-e-books/article/92471-ai-is-about-to-turn-book-publishing-upside-down.html)
https://twitter.com/jgnoelle/status/1665729550922252288

A lawyer tried to use ChatGPT for “research”:
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.575368/gov.uscourts.nysd.575368.32.1.pdf
Legal scholar (and former MAIHT3K guest) Kendra Albert breaks down the story about a lawyer using ChatGPT for court proceedings:
https://dair-community.social/@kendraserra/110441210244994168

ChatGPT as investment advisor:
https://venturebeat.com/ai/jpmorgan-plans-for-a-chatgpt-like-investment-service-are-just-part-of-its-larger-ai-ambitions/

Professor asks “ChatGTP” if it wrote student’s assignments, and then gave them a 0 if it said yes.
https://twitter.com/Linkletter/status/1658591316991938560

You can check out future streams at http://twitch.tv/dair_institute.

Follow Emily at https://twitter.com/EmilyMBender and https://dair-community.social/@EmilyMBender
Follow Alex at https://twitter.com/alexhanna and https://dair-community.social/@alex

Music: Toby Menon.
Production: Christie Taylor.

Kendra Albert

2023-05-27 14:52:10

Are you just catching up on the bonkers story about the lawyer using ChatGPT for federal court filings? This is a thread for you.

@m0bi Tej konfiguracji AI💩 <-> AI💩 akurat nie rozważałem. Bo na razie to jest tylko ciekawostka - te "silniki" Ai nie czytają jeszcze "na bieżąco" zawartości internetu, żeby się nawzajem uczyć na swojej produkcji (publikowanej przez ludzi) . I chyba raczej to się szybko nie zmieni bo to za duże ryzyko - przecież ktoś musiałby jakkolwiek filtrować strumień informacji, który trafia do AI - a już widać ile czasu (i niskopłatnej pracy ludzi) zajęło wyszczyszczenie modelu po nakarmieniu jednak z dość dokładnie wybranych źródeł danych.
#AI #chatgpt #bard #shitshow

https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/22/23651564/google-microsoft-bard-bing-chatbots-misinformation

m0bi

2023-03-23 06:55:15

cc @miklo proroku 😉