CharonY

At this point in life, I am convinced that this is the essence of the human condition.

I speak like someone whose professional responsibilities includes being on both sides of peer reviews. I am not sure why you bring it up. Serving as reviewer is a voluntary service and if you do not have interest in it, then just don't do it. Likewise, if you are not an expert in a particular area, don't review in that area. It is really simple, actually. What you shouldn't do is to offload it to AI.

It is likely part of it. There a few articles describing a rather desolate state of affairs where young men and women have increasingly incompatible views and with a system that emphasizes convenience in relationships (e.g. dating apps), things might not look so good. And at the same time folks feel more lonely than ever.

And importantly, the authors coming up with a new concepts are supposed to convince skeptical folks. From what I can tell, current LLMs are really bad at that. But to me, it seems that OP sees peer review as a sort of box ticking exercise, which it really shouldn't be. Anecdotally in my field it seems that beyond scam journals, there is also a bit of fragmentation in science publishing and a seeming decline in article quality. Most notably I found that quite a few new papers, unknowingly replicate finding from somewhat older articles (the magic number seems about 15 years, I suspect it has something to do with changes in keywords as well as accessibility). Theoretically, AI which are well-trained could assist here. But then it seems that for some reasons they tend to coagulate around the same articles and tend to have issue to find relevant papers.

I stumbled across another counterintuitive finding on the age (and gender) split: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/almost-a-third-of-gen-z-men-agree-a-wife-should-obey-her-husband

That does not seem to make any real sense. Fundamentally a review is to some degree a value judgement on the persuasiveness of an argument or finding presented. Yes, one can use software to figure the basis and whether others have already reported on it. But if it is something new, you will have to provide evidence supporting whatever hypotheses you propose. And there will be degrees in judgement as folks might disagree on the value of a particular approach, especially when not applied in a standard way. So in a normal review, folks will form an argument regarding why they think this approach is sufficiently strong or not. This, again, is ultimately a value judgement and requires folks with different perspectives to agree (or disagree) on whether a publication has sufficient merit. Flawed as it is, I don't see how loop searches are going to add anything to it. Because that is fundamental to the whole topic. A review is based on the perspective and knowledge of the review, and it is not an enumeration of facts or factoids. As such, the reviewer's understanding of the topic, as well their specific background and perspective is immensely important.

While a step in the right direction, I fear that it does not go far enough, and there have been issues regarding enforcement. Nonetheless I am looking forward to see how things develop and at minimum it shows some reaction to things. Percentage-wise, perhaps (or at least less so than younger folks). However, quite a few are on social media (pre-pandemic data on folks over 65 was a bit less than 50%). However, it turns out that older folks (and also the younger ones, it is a bit of a biphasic distribution) are also more likely to share misinformation. A weird thing is that folks that are GenX and Millenials are those who are the most tech savvy, and especially older as well as younger folks are more susceptible to misinformation and scams. Or rather, it is pretty much expected, due to the way tech has changed. It is somewhat interesting to look at perception of far-right parties among older folks in different countries. For example, the German Nazi-wannabe party (AfD) has the lowest votes among folks 70+ (10%), peaking around ages 35-44 and going down again. But folks 18-24 are voting far right with similar frequency as 45-59 year olds, but they also vote with a much larger frequency to the leftist party. I.e. the are on the extremes on both ends, whereas the oldest folks are generally more voting for center or center-right parties. I suspect that this is related to the fact that the oldest generations still have impressions from the post-war era, whereas for many others the lessons of the past have sadly faded. In the UK, which OP was about, the distribution is more"traditional" with the Reform Party favoured substantially more by the older segment. But many other European countries have lower support for the far right among the oldest bracket, but a peak somewhere around 35-60. I.e. folks that should fall under the more tech savvy generation. That is all to say, I suspect some of the traditional wisdom regarding age and voting behaviour has gone straight out of the window.

Fair, also to the other points. However, I will add that democracy as an institution is not guaranteed, while it shouldn't disenfranchise any group, there is the inherent risk that folks that are clearly anti-democratic can be voted into power. And that, too leads to dictatorship. OK, since I had to suffer through articles about it, I feel compelled to share that with you so that we can suffer together. Essentially there is a somewhat weird movement among young men, which tries to create a new form of masculinity, which is strongly associated with right-wing, populist, anti-feminist and to various degree racist ideals. The core of the ideology is that masculinity is in crisis and feminism is to blame. That movement is propagated mostly via the internet by, what I understand, very popular influencers and podcasters. Originally a fringe movement, it has not only become mainstream, but has become part of many right and far right political movements, including MAGA, but also internationally. For example in the UK pupils have been exposed to such influencers and female teachers have trouble teaching young boys: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/19/world/europe/andrew-tate-uk-teachers.html I think to some degree it used to be true. You mentioned higher education, but historically only few had the privilege of getting exposed to that. More commonly, older folks resisted social change, including those that could benefit the younger generation. The way to move things their way often was to wait for generational change. I think in recent times these notions have shifted. One is the growing gender divide, that I half-jokingly mentioned, but in the Western world it has been an almost universal phenomenon. Younger folks and again, especially men, for the first time seem to become more conservative and more aligned with social ideals (such as regarding gender roles). While that it is in itself not necessarily bad, the manifestations have become increasingly toxic (as e.g. the manosphere mentioned above), but also, in conjunction with modern media consumption, just increasingly stupid.

There is a worrying trend regarding the influence of the manosphere. Especially the right has utilized these worldviews and its surrounding media system to big political effect. What I am wondering about is whether that is just a short-term swing or potentially a long-term development. The tea party was a weird swing, until it became a fixture and seed for something worse, for example.

If we look at voting behavior of Trump as an indicator of making a mess, the clearest differential is between men and women. Trump was 10 points up among men and Harris 10 points up among women. Looking at Brexit data, men were 10 percent up for leave, whereas women were 2% for remain (https://www.statista.com/statistics/567922/brexit-votes-by-gender/ I do believe the age differential was higher here). For the Reform party, 12.9% of young men voted for Reform, compared to 5.9% of young women (https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/gender-gap-strongest-at-opposite-ends-of-political-spectrum-in-the-2024-general-election.) In Germany, AFD was at 22% with men, compared to 16% with women. So clearly, we should disenfranchise penises until they settle down and make rational decisions.

It also the question whether you want to. Few papers are just merely a series of statements of facts, but rather they try to push the boundary of knowledge by providing a particular perspective, which are then underpinned by evidence. Whether that evidence is convincing or not (or require further discussion) is ultimately a value judgement. Fundamentally, you can think of scientific papers as a discussion among peers and if AI takes over, it is going to be a discussion among algorithms. Regarding the use of AI as support, I could imagine that they could help in finding additional literature, given the exploding (and also deteriorating) literature landscape. However, I can see that backfire spectacularly, as traditionally experts in the field will know the relevant lit they want to see cited. AI would move the discussion more likely to an amalgamated consensus, with no discerning voices.

There has been somewhat extensive testing in Universities, for obvious reasons. However, for pretty much all tools the conclusion was eventually that they are not good. They have high rates of false positives, as you mentioned. But in addition, even minor is sufficient to confuse some of the software. Our school has abandoned that attempt to prevent plagiarism and I think that is or starting to be the overall consensus.

I am very much looking forward on how it is implemented and what effects it might have. Anecdotally, pretty much every of the top students I talked to had some limit on screen time or were older before they got their first cell phone.

You mean the guy who likes to snort cocaine from toilet seats and indulging in sewage baths?

Oh come on. Just a tiny portion to munch on. Barely a bite, really.

There is actually quite a bit more data regarding that, as well as a proposed mechanism. One of the key factors regarding dementia is neuroinflammation. And shingles is, of course an infection of neural tissue. A range of previous studies have shown that shingles is associated with dementia. See e.g. Chen et al., 2018 Clin Psych. There was another paper early last year (I think the first author was Tang, but cannot recall the journal) also showing reduction in dementia risk in vaccinated groups, but also looked more closely on whether folks were diagnosed with shingles. Together, the lit makes a compelling case that neuroinflammation, in this case caused by a virus, is associated with dementia, and preventing such occurrences, e.g., using a vaccine, reduces dementia risk. Outside of shingles, there is also literature showing that vaccinations in general might be associated with reduced dementia risk (including for example influenza, tetanus, diphtheria etc.). Suggesting that beyond protection of specific neural infection, there might be another effect at play. The main hypothesis is modulation of the immune response and IIRC, the idea is that vaccinated folks have a lower inflammatory response to an infection and in the time period after an infection. Thereby, they lower overall inflammation, thus reducing dementia risk. That link is AFAIK not fully validated, but in my reading the evidence is somewhat compelling and does explain some observations made in dementia research.

Gotcha If I am allowed up to 10 minutes, my go to is usually some sort of pasta. When I cook pasta I always cook too much and most of the time I will have some in the fridge. If I want a snack, I'll do a quick carbonara (especially if I got pancetta, otherwise bacon, but do not tell the Italians) or cacio e pepe or, especially in the winter, put them in a miso soup.

Wait, how do you make flapjacks in 2 minutes?

I think the difference here is that traditionally new developments or tech have made certain tasks obsolete, which often is not a bad thing. However, one of the stated goals of AGI and similar movements is to make human thinking obsolete.

The great vowel shift of Ni!

Sounds right. Knecht in the military sense was often used to describe levels of foot soldiers, but got elevated to the equivalent of Ritter (mounted but also usually associated with nobility) in English.

On the phonetic side I always found it funny that some words in old and middle English are easier to understand for folks from other language backgrounds rather than native English speakers. As mentioned in the blog this is due to the use of loanwords that were closer to their origin first and then got changed (often in a French way) over time. One of the words I was always wondering about the origin was "knight" until I saw that in Old English it was pronounced "cniht" (knɪçt), i.e. similar to the the German "Knecht". Pretty obvious in hindsight, if you pronounce knight the Germanic way.

Well, this how the tech industry responds: CompanionEinstein - AI Education CompanionEinstein logs into Canvas and does your homework automatically. He has his own computer — he can watch lectures, read essays, write papers, and participate in discussions.I will also note that what I am talking about are not media reports. I am talking about the experience of myself and colleagues over the last decades (social media), acceleration of trends over the pandemic and the rapid adoption of AI to get out of work by students. While it is possible that things will level out at some point, we are still in the midst of figuring out what is going on in the first place. Even more worrisome, I don't think that we are even starting to address the issues in education in younger folks starting about a decade ago. I.e. we are already a decade behind and now things are accelerating in the wrong direction. For many years I have been wondering whether that is just a normal generational change in attitudes. There are pathways where ways of learning might change, but the final output (e.g. academic work) still largely maintains its quality. I will also say that the simple fact that education has been expanded will result in some decline in quality but should be level out at some point. However, all indicators point to a sustained decline ranging from basic skills to mental health. It has come to the point where the benefits and purpose of academia becomes questionable. And that trend is not entirely AI driven (but will likely accelerate because of it). Underlying everything it seems that GenZ seems to be the first generation to be less capable adopting to new tech then the previous generations and at this point I think the data suggests that we are looking at something different happening to our brains than what the previous technologies did. I also think that this development is happening because we keep imagining how great these tools are going to be for productivity and are not sufficiently clear about the human side of the equation. Most importantly, I don't think that leadership, neither in academia, business/tech or government is seeing the value of proper deep development of human intellect and are only to happy to outsource that task to boost the economy. Or I might just be grumpy because I will have grade exams that are barely intelligible and will have to curve so hard that the space-time continuum becomes infinite.

I am not sure what the current status is, but interestingly there were some cafes with robots, which were remotely controlled, in part by elderly folks. Only somewhat related, but I have read somewhere that the Chinese strategy for AI is very different from the US. The latter aims to generate AGI with the assumption that it would create an enormous strategic advantage in almost all realms (how that would work is a bit unclear to me, most of the articles I read are a bit like sci-fi mixed with handwaving and not terribly concrete). The Chinese strategy otoh seems to be more about implementation of AI in somewhat more specialized tasks, such as improving fabrication (they are already the most automated workforce, from what I understand). If that happens, it will require yet another generation. The two youngest two generations right now are struggling. As I mentioned before, the issue many of them are seeing is that they only have a vague concept of live before the internet and social media has become the single most dominant element in their lives. I have likened that to the fish in the water issue, where younger folks struggle to define their position to the internet as its absence has become inconceivable. The fear that they have now there is that AI is going to take over the internet pushing them even out of those spaces.

I think one of the issues your touching on is that getting to the point of understanding requires often boring repetition. However, we have done everything to eliminate even a second of boredom and thus these the boring tasks are becoming and unendurable task for many. I have students which I would consider decently intelligent and they really do work hard, in terms of investing time. But by the time they come to university, many basic abilities have not been developed and things that would have been routine even 15 years ago, require massive time investment on their part, often resulting in immense stress, which many are also not equipped to deal with. The number of folks having burnout symptoms just from regular coursework is just too high. There is little wonder why relief from AI is so attractive, though.