Re “not a translation tool” — this example came up when a student in my class used ChatGPT to translate their homework solutions before submitting. So I don’t think it’s obvious that users (including smart MIT students) think critically about the difference.

It’d be a different situation if the AI said “I think you made a mistake” instead of silently changing the text. And again while “factual error” in this specific case is unambiguous, I think it’s likely similar substitutions are being made that are subtler.

I’m not sure an inexperienced user is likely to understand the “default” is to change your text if it sees fit. This example illustrates that it’s not just a translation algorithm—these tools digest/edit the text (eg map onto a math book). This example is obvious, others might not be.

By the way, I was involved with a committee of ACM SIGGRAPH (a large computer graphics conference) which in 2022 wrote a similar guide for new researchers. Some of this is specific to that field, but it also has useful tutorial material for all fields.

(@justinmsolomon.bsky.social)

Must be the issue

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What I get when I ask for a cello arrangement

One of our papers included a series of matrices I could prove existed but struggled to compute by estimating stochastically, PCA, squaring to remove sqrt(2), guessing, and proving a posteriori that they’re right. Took my student David another few years to get a direct proof via representation theory

Boston!!!

Big stretch!

I can see why! 🦷

So cute! His ears are perfect.

OMG I love him!! That face!!

Both, but these days most of my students are far more concerned about re-entering the U.S. What a year.