TechTakes

Deep Research is the AI slop of academia — low-quality research-slop built for people that don't really care about quality or substance, and it’s not immediately obvious who it’s for.

it's weird that Ed stops there, since answer almost writes itself. ludic had a bit about how in companies bigger than three guys in a shed, people who sign software contracts don't use that software in any normal way;

The idea of going into something knowing about it well enough to make sure the researcher didn't fuck something up is kind of counter to the point of research itself.

conversely, if you have no idea what are you doing, you won't be able to tell if machine generated noise is in any way relevant or true

The whole point of hiring a researcher is that you can rely on their research, that they're doing work for you that would otherwise take you hours.

but but, this lying machine can output something in minutes so this bullshit generator obviously makes human researchers obsolete. this is not for academia because it's utterly unsuitable and google scholar beats it badly anyway; this is not for wide adoption because it's nowhere near free tier; this is for idea guys who have enough money to shell out $whatever monthly subscription and prefer to set a couple hundred of dollars on fire instead of hiring a researcher/scientist/contractor. especially keeping in mind that contractor might tell them something they don't want to hear, but this lmgtfy x lying box (but worse, because it pulls lots of seo spam) won't

OpenAI's next big thing is the ability to generate a report that you would likely not be able to use in any meaningful way anywhere, because while it can browse the web and find things and write a report, it sources things based on what it thinks can confirm its arguments rather than making sure the source material is valid or respectable.

e: this is also insidious and potent ~~attack surface~~ marketing opportunity against clueless monied people who trust these slop machines for some reason. and it might be exploitable by tuning seo just right

That means that the harm done by these systems compound the more widely they are used as errors pile up at every stage of work, in every sector of the economy. It builds up an ambient radiation of system variability and errors that magnifies every other systemic issue with the modern state and economy.

Wanted to shout these two sentences out in particular. Best summary of my biggest current fears regarding use of "ai"/llm/transformer(?)-based systems.

thanks! It might be uncommon because it's a real pain in the ass to keep it short. Every time I make one I stress about how easily my point can be misunderstood because there are so few details. Good way to practice the art of moving on

will automate millions of jobs if it works, might kneecap the economy

will kneecap the economy if it works, too. Because companies certainly aren't going to keep people employed in those millions of jobs.

It's been frustrating to watch Gutmann slowly slide. He hasn't slid that far yet, I suppose. Don't discount his voice, but don't let him be the only resource for you to learn about quantum computing; fundamentally, post-quantum concerns are a sort of hard read in one direction, and Gutmann has decided to try a hard read in the opposite direction.

Page 19, complaining about lattice-based algorithms, is hypocritical; lattice-based approaches are roughly as well-studied as classical cryptography (Feistel networks, RSA) and elliptic curves. Yes, we haven't proven that lattice-based algorithms have the properties that we want, but we haven't proven them for classical circuits or over elliptic curves, either, and we nonetheless use those today for TLS and SSH.

Pages 28 and 29 are outright science denial and anti-intellectualism. By quoting Woit and Hossenfelder — who are sneerable in their own right for writing multiple anti-science books each — he is choosing anti-maths allies, which is not going to work for a subfield of maths like computer science or cryptography. In particular, p28 lies to the reader with a doubly-bogus analogy, claiming that both string theory and quantum computing are non-falsifiable and draw money away from other research. This sort of closing argument makes me doubt the entire premise.