Hanno Reinhannorein@mastodon.social
Oct 22, 2026, 1:55 PMI just saw this new paper on the arxiv:
AI and The Enclosure of the Scientific Commons
Very interesting and worth a read!
https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.27251
Replies
François Rinconfrincon@sciences.reOct 22, 2026, 2:48 PM@hannorein See also
this blog post"You would think that a machine powerful enough to outsmart humans would not require such levels of opacity. That it would be able to rush ahead without training data from the last few years of research. That the prompts and any available information on its path to discovery would be made available for the benefit of its future users. That its outputs would be readable and compatible with formalized proofs, and that by solving 400 problems it would generate 1000 conjectures, as humans would have done. Clearly, the machine is not there yet.
But, for the purposes of capturing scientific production, maybe it doesn’t need to get there at all."
https://proofsandprompts.com/2026/10/21/artificial-intelligence-and-the-mathematical-community/
Keith Böhlerkeithnator3000@universeodon.comOct 23, 2026, 2:46 PMThis is a good read.
> The founders of the Free Software movement furthermore had the brilliant insight that IP restrictions also have a role to play in creating and defending information commons as a whole
This is a good bit too. I am curious as to how these ideas might evolve to keep up in this new environment. I have read in online spaces many complaints that copyright and patents were outdated to how they are actually used.
Given that many things are getting de-compiled and re-implemented with AI; I think that we are going to see some landmark case. Like the thing with Art Craft; I don't see Adobe taking it sitting down and they do have money for a dream team of lawyers to figure something, or at least to lobby for a favorable change to laws.
- Hanno Reinhannorein@mastodon.socialOct 23, 2026, 3:31 PM
@keithnator3000 Yeah, I have no idea how things will turn out. For me as an academic, I think very soon anyone will be able to reimplement/vibe-code the software I write for astrophysics from "scratch" using AI. But of course, "scratch" really is "all human knowledge" including all my previous software. So I definitely think of it as theft. But I suspect scientists who just care about the end result and consider my software just a tool will no longer cite my papers.
Koen Hufkens, PhDkoen_hufkens@mastodon.socialOct 24, 2026, 12:55 PM@hannorein @keithnator3000 And here open science has a role to play. If people want to do this they will have to show the whole thing. More so, they will have to own the mistakes too. The reason not to use existing tools, or build upon them, is to scoop up free credit and credibility. However, the reverse should also be true. If you do this and you are caught out you should lose credit twice over.
- Koen Hufkens, PhDkoen_hufkens@mastodon.socialOct 24, 2026, 12:56 PM
@hannorein @keithnator3000 Sadly academia has never been good at applying moral standards, rather than just use "merit" ones.
- François Rinconfrincon@sciences.reOct 24, 2026, 1:03 PM
@koen_hufkens @hannorein @keithnator3000 i have a lot of colleagues appalled by AI who now think open science/data/OSS has signed its own death sentence by simply naïvely being open and thinking it was good for humanity.
- Koen Hufkens, PhDkoen_hufkens@mastodon.socialOct 24, 2026, 1:05 PM
@frincon @hannorein @keithnator3000 I don't think so. What the community consistently does not do was call out any freeloaders and anyone doing open-washing. I'm against any sort of purity tests, but by and large it has been a generational movement with seniors grandfathered in kicking and screaming. And boohoo if they were called out for it.
- Koen Hufkens, PhDkoen_hufkens@mastodon.socialOct 24, 2026, 1:07 PM
@frincon @hannorein @keithnator3000 In short, the raping of the commons was commonplace before open science even matured and wasn't/isn't limited to AI. With bean-counters and seniors lining up to take the biggest cuts of that pie.
- Koen Hufkens, PhDkoen_hufkens@mastodon.socialOct 24, 2026, 1:09 PM
@frincon @hannorein @keithnator3000 And finally, and this I've told many times, academics should have learned about IP and copyright. Although AI waltzed over this too, at least within their own circles this could have been a stick to beat people with.
- Koen Hufkens, PhDkoen_hufkens@mastodon.socialOct 24, 2026, 1:18 PM
@frincon @hannorein @keithnator3000 And I'm going to add one last thing here - before I stop this rant. There is this misconception that data and code is apolitical (especially within academia). This has led to a lot of these issues. Where power dynamics with respect to code and data are not acknowledged, honoured or abused. Even collecting data is political and not until recently fully acknowledged. The political dimension of doing science is HUGE blank spot for a lot of academics.
- François Rinconfrincon@sciences.reOct 24, 2026, 1:09 PM
@koen_hufkens @hannorein @keithnator3000 yeah, but when you realize how its been leveraged by the AI industry now, it increasingly looks like blue sky discovery of nuclear physics in terms of side effects.
- Koen Hufkens, PhDkoen_hufkens@mastodon.socialOct 24, 2026, 1:12 PM
@frincon @hannorein @keithnator3000 I think this is a societal problem, not one limited to open science. AI is the greatest theft in history. Grandmas were sued for supposedly downloading three mp3s in the '00s and now we can hoover up all digital content and use it for free? The issue is not with the content, it is with consent and enforcement of it in the face of capital.