[HN Gopher] LLM-assisted writing in biomedical publications thro...
___________________________________________________________________
LLM-assisted writing in biomedical publications through excess
vocabulary
Author : em3rgent0rdr
Score : 96 points
Date : 2025-07-04 18:18 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.science.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.science.org)
| em3rgent0rdr wrote:
| "Delves", "potential", and "significant" all made a large
| increase. Those words also strike me as the non-committal weasel
| words Google's AI overview for Google searches tends to produce
| as the AI isn't really entirely sure it can make a definitive
| conclusion.
| tiahura wrote:
| Potential I'll grant you, but how are significant and delves
| weasel words?
| dmead wrote:
| If you're reading a paper you're already delving. It's
| clearly filler.
| leakycap wrote:
| What does "significant" mean? It means whatever I say it
| means, it's fairly useless as anything to convey a fact
| without a definition.
|
| If I needed to program a light sensor to signal when it
| detects "significant" change in lighting, what does that
| mean? If I don't define it, it means nothing.
|
| --
|
| "Delve" is a style word, another category highlighted in the
| article as a signature of generated text.
| Leherenn wrote:
| I read it as "statistically significant", i.e. above
| noise/error level. Sounds pretty well defined to me, at
| least in a scientific paper.
| leakycap wrote:
| The reason it is a weasel word is exactly this -- it is a
| word with an implied meaning, not an implicit one.
|
| We aren't talking about "statistically significant" --
| that carries meaning only if the statistic is explained,
| though.
| redwall_hp wrote:
| Significant has a very specific meaning in statistics,
| which is going to come up in any biomedical research.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_significance
| leakycap wrote:
| Do you think an LLM takes this into account when it uses
| the word?
| tiahura wrote:
| Is the context statistical? If so, then yes.
| leakycap wrote:
| We clearly disagree, in that case - have you used LLMs?
|
| The person I was replying to linked to a Wiki article on
| "statistical significance" which is not the word being
| used or discussed in this convo; did you note that before
| you replied?
|
| You expect an AI to follow context, but the context
| switched here and none of the humans are seemingly
| pointing it out. I'd expect LESS of an LLM, not more.
| leakycap wrote:
| Fascinating to see that the word "important" dropped off in
| usage
|
| Given the way generated text works, it makes sense it would
| less often highlight a directly important phrase or passage or
| detail, since it has no understanding of what it is writing.
| userbinator wrote:
| "delves" is stereotypical LLM-ese to me. I don't think I've
| ever heard a real human use that word before LLMs became
| common.
| sincerely wrote:
| Magic the Gathering players are intimately familiar with the
| term :)
| ummonk wrote:
| I've only ever seen it used in magic the gathering
| ToValueFunfetti wrote:
| The dwarves of Moria are notable for having delved to excess.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I'd see it occasionally, usually in bullshit corporate
| writing replete with other buzzwords, which is probably where
| the LLMs picked up on it.
| jowea wrote:
| It seems it is common in Nigerian English, from where in
| ended up in AI datasets.
| OtherShrezzing wrote:
| I think it's from YouTube. "With that, we can delve into
| [topic]" was part of the vocabulary for video essays for
| years. It always joined an introduction's closing thesis
| statement with the rest of the video content.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Delves has a huge increase because it's a new thing in WoW.
| That's why you see a big spike in Google trends. If you see an
| article that claims "delves" increase is because of LLMs, you
| can safely ignore anything else it has to say.
| derbOac wrote:
| Took me too long to catch the playful (or hinting?) word use in
| the title.
| leakycap wrote:
| I had downloaded the article and began taking notes and hadn't
| noticed until your comment. Oh dear.
| pcrh wrote:
| The post title isn't grammatically correct. It should be
| "caused _a_ " or "shift _s_ "
| HappMacDonald wrote:
| This strikes me as the kind of language fingerprinting
| someone might use to look for things that I write: I tend to
| discard articles (a, the, things like that) when I'm in a
| hurry.
| pcrh wrote:
| The post title has now been changed to be the same as the
| article's title.
| accrual wrote:
| I'm not a scientist or someone producing technical literature for
| others to consume, but I feel like I'd _want_ my humanity to come
| through on important topics like this. I love using LLMs but
| there are some tasks (like writing comments or texting friends)
| that I refuse to use them with, otherwise I 'm applying
| `normalizeText(myUniqueText)`.
|
| I'm sure there are deadlines and other constraints that cause
| professionals to reach for LLMs when producing their work, just
| like school-age kids use them for homework so they have more time
| to do whatever they'd rather be doing, so I can understand.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Ok, but what if your humanity expresses itself best in a
| language that only 20M people speak with no major biomedical
| publications?
| leakycap wrote:
| > your humanity expresses itself best
|
| I don't think these papers are about human expression;
| they're about communicating data and learned information in a
| way that can be used by others.
|
| You might be thinking of the field of art, which also has
| strong opinions about AI in their field.
| JuettnerDistrib wrote:
| I'm sure many researchers have English as a second language,
| and rely on LLM to fix their grammar and vocabulary.
| leakycap wrote:
| Which is horrifying: if an ESL author must publish in English
| and therefore does not have a full grasp of nuances and
| meaning conveyed by English wording, they should involve an
| editor... not a word machine that doesn't understand, either.
|
| Wording matters when conveying information, ESL speakers
| should be working with fellow humans when publishing in a
| language they do not feel comfortable writing on their own.
| wanderingstan wrote:
| As with many areas, it's easier to recognize "correct" than
| to generate "correct." When I lived in Germany I would
| often use the early online translation tools to help refine
| my written German and it was useful to see how they
| corrected it, and it was usually a matter of "of course
| that's the right way, I see it now!"
| leakycap wrote:
| I think you're generalizing widely between your
| experience and the ability of researchers publishing
| these millions of papers, which as of 2024 at least ~13%
| were being LLMed.
|
| Seems important to know. LLMs lie and mislead and change
| meaning and completely ignore my prompt regularly. If I'm
| just trying to get my work out the door and in the
| editing phase, I don't trust myself to catch errors
| introduced by and LLM in my own work.
|
| There is a lack of awareness of the importance of the
| conveyed meaning in text, not just grammatical
| correctness. Involving people, not word machines, is the
| right thing to do when improving content for publication.
| HappMacDonald wrote:
| Does the grant cover an editor's involvement? How much does
| the experiment need to be trimmed back and the sample size
| need to be reduced: how much data must be sacrificed to
| support that?
| leakycap wrote:
| If no one on a given team fluently speaks, writes, and
| understands the cultural context of the required output
| language, that team will need to find a solution.
|
| It should not be a word machine (which, I should point
| out, does not have a brain)
|
| Solving this problem might just involve using some of the
| resources to support the output being correct in the
| required language. You can call that a "cost"
| perching_aix wrote:
| > I'm not (...) producing technical literature for others to
| consume, but I feel like I'd want my humanity to come through
| on important topics like this.
|
| This will absolutely be just an opinion, but the kind of
| documentations I dislike the most are the ones that are (full
| of) arbitrarily structured prose. There's a time and place for
| self-expression and phrasing liberties; intricate, brittle, and
| especially long technical descriptions I don't think is one of
| them.
| accrual wrote:
| Definitely, I think I wrote imprecisely when I used
| "humanity". I meant more like I personally wrote it, the
| sentence structure and grammar are mine, the mistakes are
| mine, and hopefully it's still clear and easy to understand.
|
| Speaking of mixing technical text and style/prose, I feel
| this link from yesterday did a great job executing both
| (granted it is an article, not a paper):
|
| https://jrsinclair.com/articles/2025/whats-the-difference-
| be...
| perching_aix wrote:
| I think we're on the same page, it's just that I feel
| otherwise about this part:
|
| > and hopefully it's still clear and easy to understand
|
| The idea of leaving it up to fate whether it's clear and
| easy to understand what I write, and that the sentence
| structure and grammar mistakes aren't inhibiting or
| misleading understanding, terrifies me.
|
| Now of course, it's not a terror a hearty serving of
| pressure, laziness, and overconfidence doesn't compensate
| for, so I usually just march on ahead and type what I have
| to type out nevertheless. But I do yearn for better.
|
| Maybe the real deciding factor though is that I'm ashamed
| and insecure of my writing style rather than proud or
| appreciative of it, and that's why I'd rather cast it away,
| substituting it, than keep it. Hard to tell.
| mtkd wrote:
| I expect in a few days there will be a new tool launched that
| returns word frequency/velocity in recent biomedical papers ...
| so next year's PhDs can level things using an MCP function
| lawlessone wrote:
| Will there? is someone working on it?
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| Something you've gotta understand is that _the majority_ of
| English-language scientific journal articles are written by
| authors who aren 't native English speakers/writers.
|
| > https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsb202333/publication-output-by-r...
|
| In the past, just after they submit a poorly-written paper, the
| sleazeballs at Wiley/Elsevier/Springer would "encourage" said
| authors to employ their "Author Services" who would edit and
| rewrite their paper for them, and resubmit it for publication.
| This didn't come cheap.
|
| Today, everybody just uses LLMs. LLMs are masterful translators
| of language and concepts. It's a win-win for everybody but Author
| Services.
|
| Admittedly, word choice and sentence structure are much more
| limited. (This is not necessarily a bad thing. LLM-written
| scientific papers can be clearer, and are often more tidy, than
| human-written scientific papers.) I don't like seeing LLM-written
| text in journalism, literature, and other media, but I don't mind
| it so much in scientific literature -- if there's no fraud
| involved, that is.
| leakycap wrote:
| > It's a win-win for everybody but Author Services.
|
| Having work that can be edited by a human who understands the
| concepts -or at least the words-- shows a great depth of
| usefulness to the work itself.
|
| Running your rough draft in one language through an LLM so it
| appears, at surface glance, to be similar to a publication that
| a team of humans had been involved in doesn't actually provide
| value to the author or the reader. Now the author has a paper
| they cannot say they wrote (or indeed, say who wrote it) and
| the reader cannot assume that what they read was intended to
| mean what it now means in English.
|
| If anything, people who write papers in another language to be
| published in English should be leaning more than ever on human
| editors and quality assurance measures, not slop machines that
| hallucinate with good grammar.
| DontBreakAlex wrote:
| I find it quite insulting that you seem to think that non-
| native english speakers are incapable of reading the outputs
| of LLMs to asses if it still means what they intended to say.
| perching_aix wrote:
| Why?
|
| I don't have academic paper publishing peers with bad
| language skills, but I do have colleagues with bad language
| skills, and the misunderstandings and petty catfights they
| get themselves into over poorly worded sentences, missing
| linguistic cues, and misinterpretations, is utterly
| bonkers.
|
| All otherwise perfectly smart capable people, they just
| happen to have this as a gap in their skillset. And no,
| they don't notice if transformative details get added in or
| left out.
| leakycap wrote:
| > I do have colleagues with bad language skills, and the
| misunderstandings and petty catfights they get themselves
| into over poorly worded sentences, missing linguistic
| cues, and misinterpretations, is utterly bonkers.
|
| Is this a widespread systemic issue within the
| organization, or do you work somewhere large enough that
| it is easy to find examples like this due to the number
| of people involved?
|
| If it is the former, I would not want to work somewhere
| that people get into petty catfights over editing and
| have no abiity to write a sentence or understand
| linguistic cues. I don't remember working anywhere I
| would describe in the way you do in your second
| paragraph.
|
| > And no, they don't notice if transformative details get
| added in or left out.
|
| I guess I don't have to tell you not to select them as
| the people to review your work output?
|
| Again, all the examples I'm reading make me think it
| would be beneficial for folks to include competent team
| members or external support for projects that will be
| published in a language you don't speak natively.
| perching_aix wrote:
| > Is this a widespread systemic issue within the
| organization, or do you work somewhere large enough that
| it is easy to find examples like this due to the number
| of people involved?
|
| Can't tell you for sure (would require me to have
| comprehensive knowledge of the language skills around the
| company). I do know a few folks with proper language
| skills, but they're a rarity (and I treasure them
| greatly). Could definitely be just my neck of the woods
| in the company being like this.
|
| > If it is the former, I would not want to work somewhere
| [like that where] (...)
|
| Yeah, it's not great. The way I solved this was by simply
| not caring and just talking to them in proper English,
| hammering them until they provide me (and each other)
| with enough cross-verifiable information that thus
| definitely cannot be wrong (or will be wrong in a very
| defendable way), with an additional serving of double-
| triple checking everything. Some are annoyed by this,
| others appreciate it. Such is life I suppose.
|
| > I guess I don't have to tell you not to select them as
| the people to review your work output?
|
| I don't really have a choice. I think you might
| misunderstand what it is that I deliver though. I work
| with cloud technologies, so while I do sometimes deliver
| technical writing, most of my output is configuration
| changes and code. When I speak of language barrier
| issues, that's about chat, email, and ticket
| communications. I think that's plenty bad enough to have
| these kinds of troubles in though, especially when it's
| managers who're having difficulties.
| leakycap wrote:
| > I don't really have a choice.
|
| When does your employment contract end?
| perching_aix wrote:
| Not a fixed contract, so when either side terminates it
| (I understand the question was rhetorical). Where I live,
| opportunities are not so plentiful, though I am working
| on polishing up my CV to compensate. Benefits are decent
| though, can WFH all the time, so that's also a
| consideration. Most everywhere they're doing the silly
| hybrid presence thing now, which would suck (back and
| joint issues don't mesh too well with having to move
| around in the office and travel back and forth every
| (other) day) - maybe moreso than the linguistic landscape
| that at this point I'm fairly used to.
|
| This hesitance to switch is definitely put to the test a
| lot these days though :)
| leakycap wrote:
| Wow, truly insufferable!
| leakycap wrote:
| Telling me you're insulted by my comment makes me question
| whether it is worth the time to reply. In the spirit of
| goodwill, let me provide some context that your emotional
| response might not have given you time to consider:
|
| I work in a multilingual healthcare field and my output is
| often translated into different languages. Forms. Posters.
| Take-home advice following surgery. We provide all of this
| in every language where more than about 5% of customers
| speak that, so English, Vietnamese, Korean, Spanish,
| Tagalog and Mandarin.
|
| In addition to English, I speak and read one of these other
| languages fluently and have since I was about 9 years old,
| but I don't live in the culture and don't understand the
| conveyed meaning of translated health-related phrases.
|
| Do you think I use an LLM or an editor that does? No-
| because that would be silly and could convey information
| incorrectly to the audience who can only speak that
| language.
|
| If you want to be quite insulted, turn on the news and get
| a realistic perspective on what is going on in the world.
| The people hurt by text going through LLMs is going to be
| those in extreme poverty and minorities subjected to
| machine generated translations without human review. You're
| fighting on a site where most of us would likely be on the
| same side of so many issues. Let's discuss and not make
| this facebook full of thoughtless responses.
| stackbutterflow wrote:
| Especially because it's so much easier to understand text
| than to produce it. I can read difficult authors in a
| foreign language and understand perfectly but there's no
| way I could write like them.
| leakycap wrote:
| This just tells me you don't work with multiple languages
| very often.
|
| I have spoken a second language fluently since about 9. I
| produce work that is translated into that language
| regularly... by a translator.
|
| Being able to read words does not means I understand the
| meaning they convey to a person who only speaks that
| language. These are scientific papers we're talking
| about, conveyed meaning is valuable and completely lost
| when a non-native speaker publishes machine generated
| output that the writer could not have written themselves.
| stackbutterflow wrote:
| This just reminds me to never assumes someone's reality.
| I speak more than two languages. And I disagree.
|
| Papers are read by all type of people, I don't know why
| you assume scientific papers which are almost all written
| in English are read solely by native English speakers.
|
| People have been doing science in broken English, French,
| German, Arabic, Latin and more for as long there has been
| science to be made.
| leakycap wrote:
| Sounds like you would be a perfect person to help clear
| up misunderstandings in texts being translated if your
| skills are as keen as you describe.
|
| You mention being reminded not to assume someone else's
| reality by our conversation--I would encourage you to
| also be reminded of the common fallacy where people
| wildly overestimate their own abilities, especially when
| it comes to claiming to speak/read/write multiple
| languages with knowledge akin to a native speaker.
|
| It is unfortunately very common to mislead oneself about
| abilities when you haven't had to rely on that skillset
| in a real environment.
|
| I would venture that you don't regularly work with
| multiple languages in your work outputs, or you would
| have likely received feedback by now that could help
| provide understanding about the nuances of language and
| communication.
| perching_aix wrote:
| If you disagree with the assertion that people generally
| have an easier time understanding language (correctly or
| not) than producing it, that's one thing and that's fine.
| But if you consider it a claim outright, and find it
| incorrect, then that's gonna need some beyond-anecdotal
| supporting evidence, or you should ask for some from the
| other side. Digging into each others' backgrounds is not
| this.
|
| Keeping to anecdotals and opinions though, I only speak
| one foreign language sadly, that being English, but this
| effect is very familiar to me, and is also frequently
| demonstrated and echoed by my peers too. Even comes up
| with language loss, not just language learning. Goes
| hand-in-hand with reading, writing, listening, and
| speaking being very different areas of language ability
| too, the latter two being areas I'm personally weak in.
| That's already a disparity that a cursory read of your
| position says shouldn't exist (do correct me if I'm
| misinterpreting what your stance is though).
|
| And all this is completely ignoring how even the native
| language output one produces can be just straight up
| wrong sometimes, and not faithful to intentions. I've
| been talking about it like there's a finish line too, but
| there really isn't. This is why things like mechanized
| math proofs are so useful. They are composed in formal
| languages rather than natural ones, enabling their
| evaluation to be automated (they are machine-checkable).
| No unintended semantics lost or added.
| leakycap wrote:
| > If you disagree with the assertion that people
| generally have an easier time understanding language
| (correctly or not) than producing it, that's one thing
| and that's fine.
|
| I disagree with the assertion that a person should rely
| on an LLM as part of their ability to publish in a
| language they don't understand well enough themselves to
| complete without involving a word machine.
|
| > Digging into each others' backgrounds is not this.
|
| I spoke from experience and it was then skewered by
| someone cosplaying the duolingo owl on the internet. You
| can take it up with them if you have an issue.
|
| > And all this is completely ignoring how even the native
| language output one produces can be just straight up
| wrong sometimes, and not faithful to intentions.
|
| How does the inability you point out of even a native
| speaker to clearly and effectively communicate sometimes
| not simply make it more obvious that a person less
| familiar with the language should involve a person who
| is?
| perching_aix wrote:
| > How does the inability you point out (...) not simply
| make it more obvious that a person less familiar with the
| language should involve a person who is?
|
| I think that's a perfectly obvious point that the person
| you were replying to, you, and me, are all on board with
| and have been throughout. Inviting their or your
| attention to this was not the purpose of that sentence.
|
| > I spoke from experience
|
| Great.
|
| > and it was then skewered by someone cosplaying the
| duolingo owl on the internet. You can take it up with
| them if you have an issue.
|
| But my issue was/is with you. I wanted you to stop
| engaging in the use of combative and emotionally charged
| language. I understand that you feel justified in doing
| so, but nevertheless, I'm asking you to please stop. It
| dilutes your points, and makes it significantly harder to
| engage them. I further don't think you guys were
| disagreeing nearly hard enough to justify it, but that's
| really not my place to say in the end.
|
| > I disagree with the assertion that a person should rely
| on an LLM as part of their ability to publish in a
| language they don't understand well enough themselves to
| complete without involving a word machine.
|
| Thanks for clarifying - it genuinely looked like you were
| disagreeing with what I mentioned too.
| leakycap wrote:
| > But my issue was/is with you. I wanted you to stop
| engaging in the use of combative and emotionally charged
| language.
|
| You seem very intelligent, I truly believe your time and
| energy would be better spent doing literally anything
| else than providing me feedback on my commenting
| etiquette. Please, I implore you to do more with your
| time that will provide value! You genuinely seem smart.
|
| (See how that felt? That's the effectiveness of telling
| someone on the internet you want them to behave
| differently. It's really pointless.)
| perching_aix wrote:
| > See how that felt? That's the effectiveness of telling
| someone on the internet you want them to behave
| differently. It's really pointless.
|
| I mean, I think this was pretty alright? I appreciate the
| advice too, and even generally agree with it. This was
| just my extremely poor attempt at deescalation, because I
| thought it might work out nevertheless.
| jltsiren wrote:
| These are scientific papers we're talking about,
| typically written by non-native speakers to a primarily
| non-native audience. Scientific writing practices have
| evolved over a long time to convey meaning reliably
| between non-native speakers. You are supposed to write
| directly and avoid ambiguity. To rely on literal meaning
| and avoid idioms used by native speakers. To repeat
| yourself and summarize.
|
| Based on what I've seen, LLMs can write scientific
| English just fine. Some struggle with the style,
| preferring big pretentious words and long vague
| sentences. Like in some caricature of academic writing.
| And sometimes they struggle with the nuances of the
| substance, but so do editors and translators who are not
| experts in the field.
|
| Scientific communication is often difficult. Sometimes
| everyone uses slightly different terminology. Sometimes
| the necessary words just don't exist in any language.
| Sometimes a non-native speaker struggles with the
| language (but they are usually aware of it). And
| sometimes a native speaker fails to communicate (and
| keeps doing that for a while), because they are not used
| to international audiences. I don't know how much LLMs
| can help, but I don't see much harm in using them either.
| A_D_E_P_T wrote:
| I think you overestimate the extent of Author Services'
| involvement. It's near nil; there's no back-and-forth; you
| just send them your article and they send back a version with
| fewer grammatical/textual errors and correct formatting for
| the journal. It's a lot like an LLM, just slower and
| considerably more expensive.
|
| Also, you severely underestimate the ability of the authors
| to edit and verify the correctness of their own work. They
| wrote it in the first place, after all. They know, better
| than anybody else, what's important to convey.
|
| What's more, this editing step happens before peer review, so
| if the paper is junk or has glaring errors it'll probably be
| turned down by most respectable publications. Even the
| marginal publications won't publish stuff that's really bad.
| leakycap wrote:
| You're pointing out issues with one departmental service
| provided by one publishing company. I'm pointing out issues
| with using any LLM.
|
| If you don't like Author Services, use someone else.
| Involve a coauthor. This is not even a remotely hard
| problem to solve.
| raincole wrote:
| In my (non-English-speaking) country, paying for an editing
| service before one submits a paper was very common. Now it's
| all AI edited.
|
| That's not the interesting part though. The interesting part
| is that the biggest editing service provider here explicitly
| states it's okay for the clients to send the papers through
| AI _first_ then buy their service for 'additional human
| editing.' They even offer cheaper price for papers that are
| already edited by AI.
|
| The irony is not lost on me.
| perching_aix wrote:
| Sounds a bit scary from a correctness standpoint. I have to
| wonder if such paper authors have the necessary language skills
| to ascertain whether their LLM of choice didn't e.g. add in any
| nuance that isn't correct or intended.
|
| I do think it's possible they do, I myself am a foreign speaker
| who would consider doing something like this, and I think I
| could notice if that happens. But then I think I'm also well
| beyond the level where this would be a necessity for me, rather
| than just a convenience and an additional polishing step.
| diggan wrote:
| Wouldn't it be the same if they use the "Author Services" as
| with an LLM? Essentially "How do you evaluate something that
| might go above your head?" remains the same regardless of the
| tool/service used.
| perching_aix wrote:
| I don't think modeling this as Author Services = good, LLM
| = bad (or vice versa) makes for a fruitful conversation,
| and that (modeling it as such) wasn't my intention either.
| I'd definitely expect Author Services to do a better job
| though, even just based on this much description.
| diggan wrote:
| > I'd definitely expect Author Services to do a better
| job though, even just based on this much description
|
| Yeah, me too, but the claim was if "paper authors have
| the necessary language skills to ascertain" the
| correctness of the translation. Regardless of how good
| the LLM or Author Services are, the problem remains the
| same.
| perching_aix wrote:
| Right, that's true. Also scary in its own way. I'm not
| too big a fan of natural languages - something I voice
| quite frequently these days I notice :)
| AlienRobot wrote:
| The main worry, in my opinion, is an issue of
| responsibility. If the author services makes a mistake, a
| person will be blamed for it. But when an LLM makes a
| mistake, people tend to shift the responsibility from the
| person that used the LLM to the LLM itself.
|
| People don't simply want to shift the effort of a task away
| from themselves, they also want to shift away the
| responsibility for doing it wrong.
| diggan wrote:
| > If the author services makes a mistake, a person will
| be blamed for it
|
| Wouldn't the paper authors be "blamed" (held responsible)
| for it, rather than the "Author Services"? Ultimately,
| they're responsible for the quality of their paper.
|
| Just like I'm responsible for making sure my taxes are
| paid correctly, even if I use an account, tax lawyer and
| financial advisor for the whole shebang. If anything is
| incorrect, I'll be held responsible.
| AlienRobot wrote:
| Yes, but this will only happen after a mistake occurs.
|
| What I mean is that if it's your responsibility to do
| something right, it acts a deterrent that motivates you
| to make sure of it.
|
| LLM's allow people to defer this responsibility to the
| LLM, so they may avoid making sure of things because they
| let the LLM take upon their responsibility.
| mihaaly wrote:
| I believe both arguments assume honest contributors, which
| may not be completely true. I have no reference but vague
| recollection of doctored data, made up results (basically
| cheating) due to publication pressure or just
| dishonesty/lazyness plaguing the reliability of scientific
| publications. Some may even be happy of the twisted reality
| or halucinations producing novel sounding results advancing
| the scientific career similar to those occured in the past.
| Reproducibility crisis is their friend to get away with it
| for a long enough time to have the personal gain harvested.
| perching_aix wrote:
| The reason I "assume honest contributors" is because
| assuming anything else produces trivial conclusions.
| Obviously someone who just wants to pump out something,
| anything, won't care about the accuracy of delivery, nor
| will anyone be impacted by the lack of it (as the paper was
| rubbish from the get-go). I just don't find that whole can
| of worms relevant here.
|
| If I really think about it, I guess I can see it being
| relevant like how typesetting software is, for making a
| paper _feel_ more serious than it really is. Not really the
| angle I was going for though.
| dev_l1x_be wrote:
| Absolutely. I think, even for non scientific journals the LLMs
| have a net good effect on expressiveness and clarity when
| instructed like that.
| einpoklum wrote:
| > LLMs are masterful translators of language and concepts
|
| No, they are not. They will - speaking generally - try to
| produce what seems like a typical translation; which is often
| the same thing, but not always.
| diggan wrote:
| They're pretty good at translation, to be honest.
| Transformers was initially invented/discovered in order to
| build something better for doing translations with Google
| Translate, so it's hardly a surprise they are pretty good at
| it.
| fallinditch wrote:
| I both like and dislike the writing style of LLMs.
|
| I like the clarity and easy-to-read usability, but at the same
| time I find the stylistic tics and overusage of words and phrases
| often grates.
|
| I wonder if this stylistic failure is something that will get
| fixed or if it's the inevitable consequence of LLMs.
| sandspar wrote:
| It might be because millions of people interact with the same
| entity and then swap notes. Someone points out "delve" and
| "it's not just X, it's Y," and other people go, "Yeah, I see
| that too!"
|
| It's the same thing with celebrity impressions. Everyone's
| watched Jack Nicholson enough to sense his quirks without
| naming them. Then a comedian highlights those quirks, and we're
| like, "Haha, that's EXACTLY it!"
| leakycap wrote:
| You need to prompt the LLM to provide the style you want. I
| have sometimes drag a few of my rough notes into the prompt and
| tell it to write me an article explaining this topic in the
| style of a site like The Verge, Daring Fireball, NYT, the
| onion, etc...
|
| I don't publish this kind of output or build on it, but it
| makes my own topic I need to review more interesting and makes
| me question it as if I was reading it on a site like those I
| mention.
|
| Using this kind of output as your own work seems weird, given
| it is templating so hard on your references -- but I don't like
| reading the pollyanna GPT speak.
| pona-a wrote:
| I think a lot of these are artifacts of RLHF and left-to-right
| thinking, and one might actually go away with diffusion LLMs.
| If anyone here spoke to Gemini Diffusion, does it have
| different speech patterns?
| aDyslecticCrow wrote:
| First time I've heard about Gemini Diffusion. I thought it
| was only a matter of time before others would adopt it as
| soon as I saw the paper by inceptionlabs.ai.
|
| Not sure I'm happy about LLMS getting better... but it feels
| like an obvious improvement in both computational efficiency
| and training method.
| leakycap wrote:
| Generated text seems to work because so few people read and even
| fewer think as they read.
|
| AI writing often creates a firehose output of sing-songy, long,
| over styled text -- which is a lot to ask a reader to get through
| and really comprehend.
|
| I'm guilty of forming my own conclusion or just believing what I
| see when I'm in a hurry or unfamiliar or don't care a ton. I'd
| rather read a human's rough output than a polished generated text
| version.
| Animats wrote:
| Amusingly, the article talks about "improving equity in science".
| The linked article, "AI tools can improve equity in science" has
| a link to Google Scholar.[1] The summary there begins "The global
| space industry is growing rapidly--the number of satellites in
| orbit is expected to increase from 9000 today to over 60,000 by
| 2030 . In addition, it is estimated that more than 100 trillion
| untracked pieces of old satellites ...". That's because Google
| Scholar hit a paywall and treated the following unrelated letter
| as the content.
|
| So it looks like the authors used some tool to generate plausible
| citation links, which they did not read before publishing.
|
| They did some real work. Here's their list of "excess style
| words", ones whose frequency has increased substantially since
| LLMs:
|
| accentuates, acknowledges, acknowledging, addresses, adept,
| adhered, adhering, advancement, advancements, advancing,
| advocates, advocating, affirming, afflicted, aiding, akin, align,
| aligning, aligns, alongside, amidst, assessments, attains,
| attributed, augmenting, avenue, avenues, bolster, bolstered,
| bolstering, broader, burgeoning, capabilities, capitalizing,
| categorized, categorizes, categorizing, combating, commendable,
| compelling, complicates, complicating, comprehending, comprising,
| consequently, consolidates, contributing, conversely,
| correlating, crafted, crafting, culminating, customizing,
| delineates, delve, delved, delves, delving, demonstrating,
| dependability, dependable, detailing, detrimentally, diminishes,
| diminishing, discern, discerned, discernible, discerning,
| displaying, disrupts, distinctions, distinctive, elevate,
| elevates, elevating, elucidate, elucidates, elucidating,
| embracing, emerges, emphasises, emphasising, emphasize,
| emphasizes, emphasizing, employing, employs, empowers, emulating,
| emulation, enabling, encapsulates, encompass, encompassed,
| encompasses, encompassing, endeavors, endeavours, enduring,
| enhancements, enhances, ensuring, equipping, escalating,
| evaluates, evolving, exacerbating, examines, exceeding, excels,
| exceptional, exceptionally, exerting, exhibiting, exhibits,
| expedite, expediting, exploration, explores, facilitated,
| facilitates, facilitating, featuring, formidable, fostering,
| fosters, foundational, furnish, garnered, garnering, gauged,
| grappling, groundbreaking, groundwork, harness, harnesses,
| harnessing, heighten, heightened, hinder, hinges, hinting, hold,
| holds, illuminates, illuminating, imbalances, impacting, impede,
| impeding, imperative, impressive, inadequately, incorporates,
| incorporating, influencing, inherent, initially, innovative,
| inquiries, integrates, integrating, integration,
| interconnectedness, interplay, intricacies, intricate,
| intricately, introduces, invaluable, investigates, involves,
| juxtaposed, leverages, leveraging, maintaining, merges,
| methodologies, meticulous, meticulously, multifaceted,
| necessitate, necessitates, necessitating, necessity, notable,
| noteworthy, nuanced, nuances, offering, optimizing,
| orchestrating, outlines, overlook, overlooking, paving, persist,
| pinpoint, pinpointed, pinpointing, pioneering, pioneers, pivotal,
| poised, pose, posed, poses, posing, predominantly, preserving,
| pressing, promise, pronounced, propelling, realm, realms,
| recognizing, refine, refines, refining, remarkable, renowned,
| revealing, reveals, revolutionize, revolutionizing, revolves,
| scrutinize, scrutinized, scrutinizing, seamless, seamlessly,
| seeks, serves, serving, shaping, shedding, showcased, showcases,
| showcasing, signifying, solidify, spanned, spanning, spurred,
| stands, stemming, strategically, streamline, streamlined,
| streamlines, streamlining, struggle, substantiated,
| substantiates, surged, surmount, surpass, surpassed, surpasses,
| surpassing, swift, swiftly, thorough, transformative, typically,
| ultimately, uncharted, uncovering, underexplored, underscore,
| underscored, underscores, underscoring, unexplored, unlocking,
| unparalleled, unraveling, unveil, unveiled, unveiling, unveils,
| uphold, upholding, urging, utilizes, varying, versatility,
| warranting, yielding.
|
| That's the vocabulary of business hype. Those are words that
| appear frequently in company press releases, and are copied into
| business publications by cut-and-paste journalists. LLMs asked to
| polish scientific material will use that vocabulary, even in
| scientific writing. If you trained an LLM on scientific
| publications, you'd get more scientific jargon, probably misused.
|
| [1]
| https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=AI+tools+can...
| userbinator wrote:
| "improving equity" as in "dumbing down everyone", indeed that's
| what LLMs have done.
| leakycap wrote:
| Good tools can be used incorrectly.
|
| I wouldn't want to go back to a world without LLMs, but I
| wish people were more thoughtful in how we use them. Right
| now, we're seeing AI being slapped on everything like every
| other trend in the past. When things settle after this
| upheaval, whether in 20 years or 100, I'd bet AI will still
| be here and be more useful than ever.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| I think the argument is the average person might be less
| useful than ever without the crutch of AI. A nation of
| useless dolts unable to compose a sentence or figure a
| simple sum in their head, dependent on their assistants &
| their personalized feed of slop.
|
| Some of this is simple progress and fine, some of it is
| terrifying to comprehend.
| leakycap wrote:
| I understand the line of thinking, I've considered it -
| but how is it different than every other "the sky is
| falling" fear-mongering about the future during previous
| revolutionary technologies?
|
| People in general don't shoe horses anymore, but we also
| do not need to know how to. Same with crank engine cars.
| Same with manual transmissions in the USA. That's just
| the changes in personal transport in a few generations.
| tempodox wrote:
| > That's the vocabulary of business hype.
|
| And I don't think that's a coincidence either. "Do not trust
| any statistics you did not fake yourself", do not trust an LLM
| you did not train yourself.
| rawgabbit wrote:
| These words are what George Orwell ranted against in
| https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-
| foundation/orwel....
|
| Orwell said these words are vague and are used to obfuscate.
| Typically to defend the indefensible.
| Animats wrote:
| Yes, that's well known. Orwell on language is an important
| subject too long to discuss here. His rules, though, are
| still useful:
|
| i. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech
| which you are used to seeing in print.
|
| ii. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
|
| iii. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
|
| iv. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
|
| v. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon
| word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
|
| vi. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything
| outright barbarous.
|
| (Much of this came from Orwell's work during WWII, when he
| worked at the British Ministry of Information. Part of his
| job was translating news into 1000-word vocabulary Basic
| English for broadcast in the Colonies, mostly India.
| Hammering political speech down into Basic English requires
| forcing it into concrete terms, which is an act of political
| interpretation. That's where Newspeak, in _1984_ , came from.
| _1984_ is semi-autobiographical, based on his WWII job. See
| "Orwell, The Lost Writings". One of his managers was called
| "Big Brother" behind his back.)
| foxglacier wrote:
| The actual DOI link also goes to that space article on
| science.org. It could be just that we as well as Google only
| sees that but the authors saw the real paper. Of course it's
| part of a big load of cite-spam so even if they did read it,
| they probably just cherry picked something - anything that
| seemed to support their vague low value claim.
| Animats wrote:
| Right.
|
| They discovered something real. LLMs turn scientific papers
| into business-speak, and that there's a lot of that going on.
| Then they tried to dress up that result for publication,
| ineptly. Doing so probably improved their chances of getting
| published.
|
| The word list I posted above is from their additional data
| PDF file. The paper itself doesn't contain it. Once you see
| their word list, it's obvious to anyone who follows business
| news what's going on. Scientific papers are being run through
| a process that converts them to press releases.
|
| That's a good result, made worse by running it through the
| process the paper derides.
| sandspar wrote:
| File under "LLMs as Western soft power victory". Chinese AI's
| have Western liberal sensibilities, English achieves even deeper
| dominance in scientific publications etc.
| leakycap wrote:
| It seems like calling a race the second the light turns green.
| If anything, recent events including AI show me that monumental
| shifts are more possible today than ever before.
| pcrh wrote:
| As a researcher myself, I find it curious that so many of my
| peers are turning to LLMs to assist in writing.
|
| Writing is a process of communicating one's data and thoughts,
| and it is the coherent crystallization of such thoughts that
| produces good scientific papers.
|
| I can't imagine a scenario where an LLM would somehow be able to
| articulate the outcome of original research better than the
| researcher themselves. And if the researcher can't articulate
| their findings, it's dubious that they are worth communicating.
|
| The exception would only be those who are not native English
| writers, in which case the LLM might improve grammar, etc.
| gapan wrote:
| > The exception would only be those who are not native English
| writers, in which case the LLM might improve grammar, etc.
|
| So, only just the vast majority of people in this world? I'm
| not sure I would call that "the exception".
| pcrh wrote:
| An LLM would only be able to "polish" a non-native speaker's
| writing. Otherwise it is not conceivable that it could
| improve the essential nature of original research being
| communicated, this is as said original research will not be
| part of its training dataset.
|
| Scientists who hope that using an LLM to help write a paper
| will improve the quality of their output are deluding
| themselves.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Paper has an A+ title that really should have been submitted!
| arbirk wrote:
| I always take issue with the saying the llms are biased. 1)
| because they are obviously biased as per their training and
| instructions 2) but are they more biased (at the moment) than
| google search and wikipedia?
|
| They are tools and we all have to get used to them.
|
| Soon grok and Deepseek will probably be biased when their owners
| crack the code, so citing what tools you use will be important.
| bello33595985 wrote:
| I need to get full current network
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