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A weird phrase is plaguing scientific papers
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- gnabgib 1y agoSmall discussion (61 points, 2 months ago, 7 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43022628 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43022628
- bigthymer 1y agoSimilar to how cartographers embed false information into maps to catch plagiarists, I expect a deliberate practice such as this to proliferate to catch specific sources used by AI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_entry
- avidiax 1y agoThe model makers can also embed such things to prove if someone copied the model or perhaps that they trained on their model's outputs. Would also be fun to make a model that has no idea that dropbears aren't real, but thinks that Bigfoot is real, but is taboo to talk about.
- arkh 1y ago> For instance, observers have noted the rise of “tortured phrases” used to evade automated integrity software, such as “counterfeit consciousness” instead of “artificial intelligence”. This has been a thing for years in the social media / podcast space. Unalive, bubbling yourself, vitamins, pdf files etc. in lieu of forbidden words because of the holy advertiser money.
- thinkingemote 1y agowhat does "bubbling yourself" mean and cover for? I've not heard of it before. Sounds kind of fun and harmless. I did a search and it seems to refer to the act of putting oneself in a bubble, that is surrounding oneself intentionally in a social network group identity bubble. (A kind of psychological defence method like repression which in the long term isn't good). What forbidden words does it replace?
- Tade0 1y agoGoogle's AI told me it's "looking for or being interested in Pastorelli Yourself Ys Pure Bubble floor tiles". All in all I shouldn't be surprised, considering advertising is Google's business.
- brador 1y agoIt comes from that Wii mario game where in multiplayer you’d jump to death and bubble up and it would auto follow the still living (best) player to finish the level.
- Kon-Peki 1y agoWait, hold on. In that Wii Mario game players could “bubble themselves” to avoid death. And then shake their controller to bring their bubble closer to an active player, who could pop the bubble and turn the “bubbled” player back into an active player. And if all players were “bubbled” then you’d go back to the world selection screen without any player losing a life - you’d only lose any powerups you had. So is this the correct source for the terminology, or did nobody using it actually play the game, or???
- arkh 1y agoIt's used by some for "killing yourself". Not as fun and harmless.
- thinkingemote 1y agoThanks and that search engines are advertising vehicles reinforce your comment! They don't want people to find what people are using that term for. Edits: Oh and the harmless and fun is the disguise!
- arrowsmith 1y agoThis is why you hear political podcasts talk about “the Austrian painter” or “midcentury Germans” and not the common names by which those things are known. Gotta keep that sweet YouTube monetisation.
- anal_reactor 1y agoIt's strange that societies discover every 100 years or so how profanities come to existence.
- pseudo0 1y agoThis is an interesting emergent trend though because it's designed to evade automated content moderation. The whole point of "PDF file" is that it's perfectly innocuous without an understanding of the surrounding context. With real-time audio transcription increasingly common, even livestreamers have to do this to avoid getting hit with automated bans or deprioritization.
- arrowsmith 1y agoWhat is PDF file a euphemism for? That was the only one in the original post I couldn’t figure out. Porn?
- SSLy 1y agoa nonce
- arrowsmith 1y agoOhhhhhh.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- anal_reactor 1y ago[dead]
- artemonster 1y ago"seggs", "unalived". ugh.
- Ferret7446 1y agoIt just goes to show that you can't easily change human behavior. Humans, and reality in general, will route around whatever petty schemes the ruler of the day dictate.
- simianwords 1y agoBut many of the existing papers with that phrase also happen to be from Iran. Interesting https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=%22vegetative+electron%22&btnG= https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=%22v...
- NoMoreNicksLeft 1y agoIf they only differ by a dot, this could be legitimate papers being translated poorly. I don't see what the big deal is. Is the suggestion that these journal articles just AI garbage? I thought the editorial boards were supposed to be able to put a stop to that.
- atahanacar 1y agoI'm assuming they are using LLMs for translation, which makes this mistake as it already knows about "vegetative electron microscopy".
- colingauvin 1y agoAsked an Iranian-German electron microscopist that I know. Scanning = robeshi Vegetative = royeshi Probably just a typo. Scanning electron microscopes (SEM) are very common instruments.
- simianwords 1y agothis is in the article
- firesteelrain 1y agoThere is an epidemic of scientific fraud in Iranian academic circles. Not that academic fraud is isolated to Iran but it’s got a higher prevalence there https://www.iranintl.com/en/202306138216 https://www.iranintl.com/en/202306138216
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- userbinator 1y agoIt reminds me of this from 16 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18374359 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18374359 I wonder how long it will be before AI regurgitates that hilarity.
- zeristor 1y agoSo papers printed in double columns are scanned as one column? I think that’s the far greater issue, and that there would be many other issues. Maybe this case is a rare exception but surely the text would be converted from a two column format to a single body before being processed. The joys of hindsight.
- jimmydddd 1y agoI understand why AI would find and use the weird phrase (vegetative electron microscopy) if it's used on the Internet. But I'm confused about the term being used in scientific papers? Does that mean the scientific papers were written by (or with the help of) AI systems? And the folks writing the scientific papers didn't proof read their papers?
- einsteinx2 1y ago> Does that mean the scientific papers were written by (or with the help of) AI systems? And the folks writing the scientific papers didn't proof read their papers? That seems to be exactly the implication, which is extremely disappointing.
- tasuki 1y agoNot surprising at all though.
- firesteelrain 1y agoIt was digitized and translated wrong by computer systems pre-Generative AI then GenAI comes along and uses it in reference material. People either reading the original text or brainstorming via GenAI comes along across this term and judge it as authoritative. So it persists
- carlmr 1y agoNot only that, AI is used for translation a lot nowadays, and the trust in its output seems to be quite high. If you're not a native English speaker and aren't surrounded by many, you might have a much harder time finding such a mistake while proofreading. I've seen students hand in auto-translated garbage 10 years ago. Nowadays auto-translation works well enough that you are at least able to read it.
- readthenotes1 1y agoAnd here I thought it would refer to "unable to replicate" or "photoshopped image"