Well, its the last day to nominate people for OSGeo Oceania board roles. That means if you want *specifically me* to go help OSGeo Oceania to do what it says on the tin, today is the day for long term, well paid job offers to arrive ;). Plus writing a nomination...
Important to remember it isnt *just* chatbots - it is the style of interaction chatbots are modelled on.
So the phenomena described are not unprecendented [dear Gaia I wish authors would stop with that], however the work remains important.
[also file under "funding we could have used on far more interesting stuff if some people had just sat down instead of thrusting their bullshits on everyone"]
https://www.media.mit.edu/projects/ai-false-memories/overview/
working on a very exciting job application today. These are insanely rare - work exactly in my quals and interest (masses of snow sliding about).
Yes I love to help people and orgs do great things as well, however, offer me a paycheck to go dig snowpits and ....
🏔️♥️
...I applied a couple years ago, when I was still giving a shit about helping out with paper reviews etc.
Well, I still give a shit - a lot of shits actually - I just ask for money upfront now and well 🤷🏻♂️
...ohyeah and it was LaTrobe university (Australia).
*sigh* being blasted with advertising about how Australia needs more teachers by university who [checks notes] rejected an application to do a masters in education specialising in science and outdoor education.
...from a practicing polar scientist, with professional experience as a guide...
RE: https://mstdn.social/@amydiehl/117447816102796795
...what astute analysts have said since the start: avoid ai™️, and be ten years ahead.
Hmmm...
....although I don't think DEECA want to hear about the risks I will identify. It'll be more like "please rubber stamp our shit burninating mandate"
(for readers outside Australia, DEECA is a government agency curently dedicated to ignoring bushfire science and instead working to a "hectares of burnination" target each year)
...still unpopular! Well, I guess if I were any good at the stuff I published papers on etc etc, I wouldn't be working underpaid manual labour to scrape by...
🤷🏻♂️
yes I am well aware of the things, what ML is etc ad nauseum, I read the call.
I write to highlight that a whole organisation representing the science of a thing that is disappearing from our planet - is wholesale touting the problem as a solution.
Where are we again?
🤷♂️
Heard from the State Emergency Service for the first time in many, many months.
"oh hey we noticed you might not have resigned correctly can you let us know so we can fix the paperwork?"
I'm sorely tempted to deliver the nuclear option. Where were you wondermuffins when a Valued Member™️ badly needed help (finding paid work)?
Thats right, peachy cheeks... Fucking nowhere.
ps: everyone should congratulate me now for keeping that tight, there are *so many* side rambles to that one....
...in that framework, how can an LLM - a statistical reassembler of things we already know about - evaluate a research output?
You know the answer already: it cannot.
Ipso (w00t science word!), an academia using these systems is lost. And must be abandoned - recast into something new.
/fin
When we do a Research™️ - yes, understanding what we *have done* is necessary.
And then we break it. Or abandon it. Or do something else.
We don't grow knowledge by doing the same thing a lot of times.
[but isn't this the scientific method? repeat lots? Pay me a billion dollars to address that one it is soooo booooring. Or read the next sentence and *understand it*].
Repetition is how we confirm things. Not how we grow new knowledge.
...which is the job of academia and research.
Right?
/4
LLMs and automated systems, however, can only see the corpus of things that exist, and ways to connect them that already exist.
To paraphrase the classic MaricSteinian axiom** - we need new approaches to solve new problems.
LLMs are not able to do that. Statistically recombining snippets of analysis isn't novelty. It *approximates* the process that we *have done* in research.
That *have done* is important.
** I made that up, it's not how the axiom is normally described
/3
At the core - science and specifically academia are about pursuing knowledge we don't know yet. Sometimes, if we're lucky, dancing at the edges of knowledge we don't even how to know yet!
The data don't exist. They're not anywhere. We don't know them, and we sometimes don't know how to know them or even if there's a way to know them. Serendipity leads as much as the structured work in a kind of chicken and egg problem.
/2
Sunday story time. Today's ramble is on academia and using LLMs - sparked by commentary on bizgrindr (linkedin) about reviewing papers and academic work using LLMs.
If that is the path established career academics are taking, the entire academic endeavour is lost. Anyone promoting that stance should be considered unfit for the work,
Big words - hear me out, try to refrain from comments until /fin
...apparently cycle mechanicing is the next "we canT FinD GoOD PeoPlE".
Like every other case, its because of:
- low pay
- high stress
- no career progression
- often poor working conditions
- no recognition
- low pay
- high stress
- no career progression
- often poor working conditions
- no recognition
- low pay
- high stress
- no career progression
- often poor working conditions
- no recognition
(got it yet?)
..at least this article actually says those things 👇🏻
https://www.bikeradar.com/news/europe-needs-105000-bike-mechanics
The 30 day map challenge has a prompting only theme day.
Even more reason to avoid.
...maybe I'll get last years ai™️ map out again...
If you have the spoons, you know what to do:
https://www.pmc.gov.au/resources/getting-it-right-building-ai-infrastructure-works-australia
...or the classic
"this is what was taught at uni/what we used in other office"
... OK ... so changing the location of a few buttons in a UI is so discombobulating that expertise is undone?
Hmm. I wonder if this place is really up for the complex and arduous work of supporting planetary systems in the face of fascism?
🤔