The problem is the systemic disincentivation of true science, the pursuit of truth and knowledge unencumbered by greed.
When you speak favorably of "factories for research", you adopt the position of a mindless consumer, relishing the prospect of "abundant" products of science.
You fail to notice, livestock lives in abundance as well.
[–] augment_me 4 days ago
[–] wqtz 4 days ago
The "publish or perish" culture is going through what is essentially the same transformation brought by the invention of the assembly line. Academia, "as an industry", is experiencing what the automobile industry went through a century ago.
Grant approvals are public. Just go through them, and you will see a pattern emerge.
The argument I keep hearing is, "AI is good in the hands of a good researcher."
5–7 papers based on the same dataset? 5–7 papers on the same core topic, published within a six-month period?
They tell me that this is their core specialization and that I simply don't understand how science works.
Science is a self-governed, self-serving, and artificially defined concept.
[–] Loquebantur 4 days ago
Science is an ideal, the pursuit for knowledge for its own sake. Science is a boon for humanity because it provides an unparalleled degree of prediction and control of the natural world.
But it doesn't tell you what to do with that.
A "capitalist" will seek personal, short-sighted gain from it, socializing repercussions, no matter how devastating. They will gladly poison society and the planet and sell it to you as "your own fault". Their life-span is limited still, so what do they care?
Technological capability exceeding human wisdom is the core issue here.
You need scientific understanding on your own side in order to know and judge the alternatives beyond what vested interests feel obliged to tell you.
[–] analog31 4 days ago
The decision about what to do only becomes relevant if the underlying information is true.
[–] Loquebantur 4 days ago
Think of AI as a magic wand or a genie that makes your wishes come true.
While that sounds great at first, actually thinking it through reverses that mirage completely.
Whom would you want to have one? Who should get to decide? How do you control the whole matter and prevent it from going horribly wrong?
Being irresponsible doesn't work already when you're a grown-up human with only your bare hands.
[–] wqtz 4 days ago
[–] Loquebantur 4 days ago
Exploiting science for economic utility alone misses the incurred second order effects, as I posited above. You completely ignore that crucial part, despite of it being the whole (very much practical) point here.
If "false" scientists end up getting all the money, resources, and social status from spamming LLM-generated papers, and the "true" scientists are shunned as slow idealists with 0 value, the first one is more of a scientist in the eyes of society than the latter.