A Reminder That Academic Papers Can Be Science Fiction
April 2, 2025
Dinobaby says, “No smart software involved. That’s for “real” journalists and pundits.
For many years, I have been skeptical about peer reviewed papers. There are two reasons.
First, I did some consulting work for an outfit in the UK. It was a crown operation. That means its outputs carried considerable influence. One of the projects in which I was engaged involved peer review of research under the purview of the “institute.” Wow, did I learn why there was a publishing backlog. Wow, did I learn about the cronyism in reviewing “real” research. Wow, did I learn about the wheeling and dealing of peer reviewers among their research assistants. Wowzah. That was an education.
Second, for a short time I was a peer reviewer for a British journal. Let me tell you that my first hand exposure to the mechanics and politics of peer reviewing did not prepare me for the reviewing task. A typical submission contained text edited by several hands. None of these was doing fine needlework. A stab here and a stab these summed up the submitted documents. The data and the charts? I had a couple of my team help me figure out if the chart was semi accurate. Working through a five or six page article sent to me for review took me and two people a week to process. In most cases, we gave the paper a D and sent it back to the editor in chief who had to tell the author and his legion of busy bees that the paper sucked. I bailed after six months. Too much work to fix up stuff that was truly terrible.
Today I read “Sometimes Papers Contain Obvious Lies.” That’s a good title, but my thought would be to include the phrase “and Really Crappy.” But I am a dinobaby, and I live in rural Kentucky. The author Cremieux Recueil is much classier than I.
I noted this passage:
The authors of scientific papers often say one thing and find another; they concoct a story around a set of findings that they might not have even made, or which they might have actually even contradicted. This happens surprisingly often, and it’s a very serious issue…
No kidding. The president of Stanford University resigned due to some allegations of fancy dancing. The — note the the — Harvard University experienced a bit of excitement in its ethics department. Is that an oxymoron? An ethics professors violated “ethics” in some research cartwheels.
I liked this sentence because it is closer to my method of communicating concern:
Lying in scientific papers happens all the time.
Hey, not just in scientific papers. I encounter lying 24×7. If someone is not articulating a fabrication, the person may be living a lie. I hear the roar of a 20 somethings hyper car at the gym. Do you?
The paper focuses on a paper with some razzle dazzle related to crime data. The author’s analysis is accurate. However, the focus on an example does not put the scale of the “crime data” problem in perspective.
Let me give you an example and you can test this for validity yourself. Go to your bank. Ask the “personal banker” to tell you about the bank’s experience with cyber crime. Then ask, “How many fraudulent transactions occur at this bank location each year?” Listen to the answer.
Crime data, like health care data, are slippery fish. Numbers do not correlate to reality when scrutinized. Verifiable, statistically valid data is expensive to generate. We live in a “good enough” world and trust whatever black box (human or mechanical) spits out data.
I do disagree with this statement in the essay:
scientists often lie with far more brazenness.
No. Fabrication is now the business of information and the information of business.
Stephen E Arnold, April 2, 2025
The AI Market: The Less-Educated
April 2, 2025
Writing is an essential function of education and communication. Writing is an innate skill as well as one that can be curated through dedicated practice. Digital writing tools such as spelling and grammar checkers and now AI like Grammarly and ChatGPT have influenced writing. Stanford University studied how AI writing tools have impacted writing in professional industries. The discovered that less-educated parts of the US heavily rely on AI. Ars Technica reviews the study in: “Researchers Surprised To Find Less-Educated Areas Adopting AI Writing Tools Faster.”
Stanford’s AI study tracked LLM adoption from January 2022 to September 2024 with a dataset that included US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau consumer complaints, corporate press releases, job postings, and UN press releases. The researchers used a statistical detection system that tracked word usage patterns. The system found that 14-24% of these communications showed AI assistance. The study also found an interesting pattern:
“The study also found that while urban areas showed higher adoption overall (18.2 percent versus 10.9 percent in rural areas), regions with lower educational attainment used AI writing tools more frequently (19.9 percent compared to 17.4 percent in higher-education areas). The researchers note that this contradicts typical technology adoption patterns where more educated populations adopt new tools fastest.”
The researchers theorize that AI-writing tools serve as equalizing measures for less-educated individuals. They also noted that AI-writing tools are being adopted because the market is saturated or the LLMs are becoming more advanced. IT will be difficult to distinguish between human and machine written text. They predict negative outcomes from this:
“ ‘The growing reliance on AI-generated content may introduce challenges in communication,’ the researchers write. ‘In sensitive categories, over-reliance on AI could result in messages that fail to address concerns or overall release less credible information externally. Over-reliance on AI could also introduce public mistrust in the authenticity of messages sent by firms.’”
It’s not good to blindly trust AI, especially with the current state of datasets. Can you imagine the critical thinking skills these future leaders and entrepreneurs will develop? On that thought, what will happen to imagination?
Whitney Grace, April 2, 2025
The First AI-Written Paper To Pass Peer Review
April 2, 2025
Cheating. I am not going to bring this topic up.
Humans have taken one small stop towards obsolesce when it comes to writing papers. Sakana AI reports that "The AI Scientist Generates Its First Peer-Reviewed Scientific Publication." This is the first known fully AI-generated paper that passed the same review process that human scientists submit their papers too. Here’s how the paper was written:
"The paper was generated by an improved version of the original AI Scientist, called The AI Scientist-v2. We will be sharing the full details of The AI Scientist-v2 in an upcoming release. This paper was submitted to an ICLR 2025 workshop that agreed to work with our team to conduct an experiment to double-blind review AI-generated manuscripts. We selected this workshop because of its broader scope, challenging researchers (and our AI Scientist) to tackle diverse research topics that address practical limitations of deep learning. The workshop is hosted at ICLR, one of three premier conferences in machine learning and artificial intelligence research, along with NeurIPS and ICML.3
The ICLR leadership and organizers were involved with the project. The paper was blindly submitted to the ICLR review team, although they were told that they might be reviewing AI generated papers.
The AI algorithm was told to research and write about a broad topic. When the process was done, three papers were selected for submission so the review board wouldn’t be overburdened. Here are the results:
“We looked at the generated papers and submitted those we thought were the top 3 (factoring in diversity and quality—We conducted our own detailed analysis of the 3 papers, please read on in our analysis section). Of the 3 papers submitted, two papers did not meet the bar for acceptance. One paper received an average score of 6.33, ranking approximately 45% of all submissions. These scores are higher than many other accepted human-written papers at the workshop, placing the paper above the average acceptance threshold. Specifically, the scores were:
• Rating: 6: Marginally above acceptance threshold
• Rating: 7: Good paper, accept
• Rating: 6: Marginally above acceptance threshold”
The AI Scientist conducted the experiment out of pure scientific curiosity to measure how current AI algorithms compare to human intellect. No problem.
Whitney Grace, April 2, 2025
No Joke: Real Secrecy and Paranoia Are Needed Again
April 1, 2025
No AI. Just a dinobaby sharing an observation about younger managers and their innocence.
In the US and the UK, secrecy and paranoia are chic again. The BBC reported “GCHQ Worker Admits Taking top Secret Data Home.” Ah, a Booz Allen / Snowden type story? The BBC reports:
The court heard that Arshad took his work mobile into a top secret GCHQ area and connected it to work station. He then transferred sensitive data from a secure, top secret computer to the phone before taking it home, it was claimed. Arshad then transferred the data from the phone to a hard drive connected to his personal home computer.
Mr. Snowden used a USB drive. The question is, “What are the bosses doing? Who is watching the logs? Who is checking the video feeds? Who is hiring individuals with some inner need to steal classified information?
But outside phones in a top secret meeting? That sounds like a great idea. I attended a meeting held by a local government agency, and phones and weapons were put in little steel boxes. This outfit was no GHCQ, but the security fellow (a former Marine) knew what he was doing for that local government agency.
A related story addresses paranoia, a mental characteristic which is getting more and more popular among some big dogs.
CNBC reported an interesting approach to staff trust. “Anthropic Announces Updates on Security Safeguards for Its AI Models” reports:
In an earlier version of its responsible scaling policy, Anthropic said it would begin sweeping physical offices for hidden devices as part of a ramped-up security effort.
The most recent update to the firm’s security safeguards adds:
updates to the “responsible scaling” policy for its AI, including defining which of its model safety levels are powerful enough to need additional security safeguards.
The actual explanation is a master piece of clarity. Here’s snippet of what Anthropic actually said in its “Anthropic’s Responsible Scaling Policy” announcement:
The current iteration of our RSP (version 2.1) reflects minor updates clarifying which Capability Thresholds would require enhanced safeguards beyond our current ASL-3 standards.
The Anthropic methods, it seems to me, to include “sweeps” and “compartmentalization.”
Thus, we have two examples of outstanding management:
First, the BBC report implies that personal computing devices can plug in and receive classified information.
And:
Second, CNBC explains that sweeps are not enough. Compartmentalization of systems and methods puts in “cells” who can do what and how.
Andy Grove’s observation popped into my mind. He allegedly rattled off this statement:
Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.
Net net: Cyber security is easier to “trust” and “assume”. Real fixes edge into fear and paranoia.
Stephen E Arnold, April 9, 2025
FOGINT: Targets Draw Attention. Signal Is a Target
April 1, 2025
Dinobaby says, “No smart software involved. That’s for “real” journalists and pundits.
We have been plugging away on the “Telegram Overview: Notes for Analysts and Investigators.” We have not exactly ignored Signal or the dozens of other super secret, encrypted beyond belief messaging applications. We did compile a table of those we came across, and Signal was on that list.
I read “NSA Warned of Vulnerabilities in Signal App a Month Before Houthi Strike Chat.” I am not interested in the political facets of this incident. The important point for me is this statement:
The National Security Agency sent out an operational security special bulletin to its employees in February 2025 warning them of vulnerabilities in using the encrypted messaging application Signal
One of the big time cyber security companies spoke with me, and I mentioned that Signal might not be the cat’s pajamas. To the credit of that company and the former police chief with whom I spoke, the firm shifted to an end to end encrypted messaging app we had identified as slightly less wonky. Good for that company, and a pat on the back for the police chief who listened to me.
In my experience, operational bulletins are worth reading. When the bulletin is “special,” re-reading the message is generally helpful.
Signal, of course, defends itself vigorously. The coach who loses a basketball game says, “Our players put out a great effort. It just wasn’t enough.”
In the world of presenting oneself as a super secret messaging app immediately makes that messaging app a target. I know first hand that some whiz kid entrepreneurs believe that their EE2E solution is the best one ever. In fact, a year ago, such an entrepreneur told me, “We have developed a method that only a government agency can compromise.”
Yeah, that’s the point of the NSA bulletin.
Let me ask you a question: “How many computer science students in countries outside the United States are looking at EE2E messaging apps and trying to figure out how to compromise the data?” Years ago, I gave some lectures in Tallinn, Estonia. I visited a university computer science class. I asked the students who were working on projects each selected. Several of them told me that they were trying to compromise messaging systems. A favorite target was Telegram but Signal came up.
I know the wizards who cook up EE2E messaging apps and use the latest and greatest methods for delivering security with bells on are fooling themselves. Here are the reasons:
- Systems relying on open source methods are well documented. Exploits exist and we have noticed some CaaS offers to compromise these messages. Now the methods may be illegal in many countries, but they exist. (I won’t provide a checklist in a free blog post. Sorry.)
- Techniques to prevent compromise of secure messaging systems involve some patented systems and methods. Yes, the patents are publicly available, but the methods are simply not possible unless one has considerable resources for software, hardware, and deployment.
- A number of organizations turn EE2E messaging systems into happy eunuchs taking care of the sultan’s harem. I have poked fun at the blunders of the NSO Group and its Pegasus approach, and I have pointed out that the goodies of the Hacking Team escaped into the wild a long time ago. The point is that once the procedures for performing certain types of compromise are no longer secret, other humans can and will create a facsimile and use those emulations to suck down private messages, the metadata, and probably the pictures on the device too. Toss in some AI jazziness, and the speed of the process goes faster than my old 1962 Studebaker Lark.
Let me wrap up by reiterating that I am not addressing the incident involving Signal. I want to point out that I am not into the “information wants to be free.” Certain information is best managed when it is secret. Outfits like Signal and the dozens of other EE2E messaging apps are targets. Targets get hit. Why put neon lights on oneself and try to hide the fact that those young computer science students or their future employers will find a way to compromise the information.
Technical stealth, network fiddling, human bumbling — Compromises will continue to occur. There were good reasons to enforce security. That’s why stringent procedures and hardened systems have been developed. Today it’s marketing, and the possibility that non open source, non American methods may no longer be what the 23 year old art history who has a job in marketing says the systems actually deliver.
Stephen E Arnold, April 1, 2025
Free AI Sites (Well, Mostly Free Sort of)
April 1, 2025
Dinobaby says, “No smart software involved. That’s for “real” journalists and pundits.
One of my team generated images of French bulldogs. After months of effort, he presented me with a picture of our French bulldog complete with one floppy ear. The image was not free. I pay for the service because free image generation systems work and then degrade because of the costs associated with doing smart software without oodles of cash.
Another person proudly emailed everyone a link to Best AI Websites and the page “Free AI Tools.” The interfaces, functionality, and the outputs vary. The linked Web page is a directory presented with some of that mobile interface zip.l
There are more than 30 tools anyone can try. Here’s what the “directory” interface looks like:
The first click displays the BestFreeAIWebsites’ write up for each “service” or “tool.” Then a direct link to the free AI site is displayed. There is a “submit” button to allow those with a free AI tool to add theirs to the listing. The “add” function is a common feature of Telegram bot and Channel listings.
Here is a selection of the “free” services that are available as of March 28, 2025, in alphabetical order:
- HUUK.ai, a trip planner
- Metavoice at https://studio.themetavoice.xyz/, a “one click voice changer”
- Presentpicker.ai, a service to help a user choose a gift.
- Remaker.ai, a face swap tool
- Yomii.app, a real estate investing assistant
ChatGPT features numerous times in the list of “free” AI tools. Google shows up a couple of times with Bard and Gemini. The majority of the services “wrap” functionality around the big dogs in the LLM space.
Are these services “free”? Our view is that the “free” is a way to get people to give the services a try. If the experience is positive, upgrades are available.
As one of my team worked through the listings, he said, “Most of these services have been available as Telegram bots from other developers.” If he is correct, perhaps Telegram’s AI functions should be included in the listing?
Stephen E Arnold, April 1, 2025
Amazon: So Many Great Ideas
April 1, 2025
AWS puts its customers first. Well, those who pay for the premium support plan, anyway. A thread on Reddit complains, "AWS Blocking Troubleshooting Docs Behind Paid Premium Support Plan." Redditor Certain_Dog1960 writes:
"When did AWS decide that troubleshooting docs/articles require you to have a paid premium support plan….like seriously who thought this was a good idea?"
Good question. The comments and the screenshot of Amazon’s message make clear that the company’s idea of how to support customers is different from actual customers’ thoughts. However, Certain_Dog posted an encouraging update:
"The paywall has been taken down!!! :)"
Apparently customer outrage still makes a difference. Occasionally.
Cynthia Murrell, March 31, 2025
Click Counting: It Is 1992 All Over Again
March 31, 2025
Dinobaby says, “No smart software involved. That’s for “real” journalists and pundits.
I love it when search engine optimization experts, online marketing executives, and drum beaters for online advertising talk about clicks, clickstreams, and click metrics. Ho ho ho.
I think I was involved in creating a Web site called Point (The Top 5% of the Internet). The idea was simple: Curate and present a directory of the most popular sites on the Internet. It was a long shot because the team did not want to do drugs, sex, and a number of other illegal Web site profiles for the directory. The idea was that in 1992 or so, no one had a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval-type of directory. There was Yahoo, but if one poked around, some interesting Web sites would display in their low resolution, terrible bandwidth glory.
To my surprise, the idea worked and the team wisely exited the business when someone a lot smarter than the team showed up with a check. I remember fielding questions about “traffic”. There was the traffic we used to figure out what sites were popular. Then there was traffic we counted when visitors to Point hit the home page and read profiles of sites with our Good Housekeeping-type of seal.
I want to share that from those early days of the Internet the counting of clicks was pretty sketchy. Scripts could rack up clicks in a slow heartbeat. Site operators just lied or cooked up reports that served up a reality in terms of tasty little clicks.
Why are clicks bogus? I am not prepared to explain the dark arts of traffic boosting which today is greatly aided by scripts instantly generated by smart software. Instead I want to highlight this story in TechCrunch: “YouTube Is Changing How YouTube Shorts Views Are Counted.” The article does a good job of explaining how one monopoly is responding to its soaring costs and the slow and steady erosion of its search Nile River of money.
The write up says:
YouTube is changing how it counts views on YouTube Shorts to give creators a deeper understanding of how their short-form content is performing
I don’t know much about YouTube. But I recall watching little YouTubettes which bear a remarkable resemblance to TikTok weaponized data bursts just start playing. Baffled, I would watch a couple of seconds, check that my “autoplay” was set to off, and then kill the browser page. YouTubettes are not for me.
Most reasonable people would want to know several things about their or any YouTubette; for example:
- How many times did a YouTubette begin to play and then was terminated in less that five seconds
- How many times a YouTubette was viewed from start to bitter end
- How many times a YouTubette was replayed in its entirety by a single user
- What device was used
- How many YouTubettes were “shared”
- The percentage of these data points compared against the total clicks of a short nature or the full view?
You get the idea. Google has these data, and the wonderfully wise but stressed firm is now counting “short views” as what I describe as the reality: Knowing exactly how many times a YouTubette was played start to finish.
According to the write up:
With this update, YouTube Shorts will now align its metrics with those of TikTok and Instagram Reels, both of which track the number of times your video starts or replays. YouTube notes that creators will now be able to better understand how their short-form videos are performing across multiple platforms. Creators who are still interested in the original Shorts metric can view it by navigating to “Advanced Mode” within YouTube Analytics. The metric, now called “engaged views,” will continue to allow creators to see how many viewers choose to continue watching their Shorts. YouTube notes that the change won’t impact creators’ earnings or how they become eligible for the YouTube Partner Program, as both of these factors will continue to be based on engaged views rather than the updated metric.
Okay, responding to the competition from one other monopolistic enterprise. I get it. Okay, Google will allegedly provided something for a creator of a YouTubette to view for insight. And the change won’t impact what Googzilla pays a creator. Do creators really know how Google calculates payments? Google knows. With the majority of the billions of YouTube videos (short and long) getting a couple of clicks, the “popularity” scheme boils down to what we did in 1992. We used whatever data was available, did a few push ups, and pumped out a report.
Could Google follow the same road map? Of course not. In 1992, we had no idea what we were doing. But this is 2025 and Google knows exactly what it is doing.
Advertisers will see click data that do not reflect what creators want to see and what viewers of YouTubettes and probably other YouTube content really want to know: How many people watched the video from start to finish?
Google wants to sell ads at perhaps the most difficult point in its 20 year plus history. That autoplay inflates clicks. “Hey, the video played. We count it,” can you conceptualize the statement? I can.
Let’s not call this new method “weaponization.” That’s too strong. Let’s describe this as “shaping” or “inflating” clicks.
Remember. I am a dinobaby and usually wrong. No high technology company would disadvantage a creator or an advertiser. Therefore, this change is no big deal. Will it help Google deal with its current challenges? You can now ask Google AI questions answered by its most sophisticated smart software for free.
Is that an indication that something is not good enough to cause people to pay money? Of course not. Google says “engaged views” are still important. Absolutely. Google is just being helpful.
Stephen E Arnold, March 31, 2025
Google: Android and the Walled Garden
March 31, 2025
Dinobaby says, “No smart software involved. That’s for “real” journalists and pundits.
In my little corner of the world, I do not see Google as “open.” One can toss around the idea 24×7, and I won’t change my mind. Despite its unusual approach to management, the company has managed to contain the damage from Xooglers’ yip yapping about the company. Xoogler.co is focused on helping people. I suppose there are versions of Sarah Wynn-Williams “Careless People” floating around. Few talk much about THE Timnit Gebru “parrot” paper. Google is, it seems, just not the buzz generator it was in 2006, the year the decline began to accelerate in my opinion.
We have another example of “circling the wagons” strategy. It is a doozy.
“Google Moves All Android Development Behind Closed Doors” reports with some “real” writing and recycling of Google generated slick talk an interesting shift in the world of the little green man icon:
Google had to merge the two branches, which lead to problems and issues, so Google decided it’s now moving all development of Android behind closed doors
How many versions of messaging apps did Google have before it decided that “let many flowers bloom” was not in line with the sleek profile the ageing Google want to flaunt on Wall Street?
The article asks a good question:
…if development happens entirely behind closed doors, with only the occasional code drop, is the software in question really open source? Technically, the answer is obviously ‘yes’ – there’s no requirement that development take place in public. However, I’m fairly sure that when most people think of open source, they think not only of occasionally throwing chunks of code over the proverbial corporate walls, but also of open development, where everybody is free to contribute, pipe in, and follow along.
News flash from the dinobaby: Open source software, when bandied about by folks who don’t worry too much about their mom missing a Social Security check means:
- We don’t want to chase and fix bugs. Make it open source and let the community do it for free.
- We probably have coded up something that violates laws. By making it open source, we are really benefiting those other developers and creating opportunities for innovation.
- We can use the buzzword “open source” and jazz the VCs with a term that is ripe with promise for untold riches
- A student thinks: I can make my project into open source and maybe it will help me get a job.
- A hacker thinks: I can get “cred” by taking my exploit and coding a version that penetration testers will find helpful and possibly not discover the backdoor.
I have not exhausted the kumbaya about open source.
It is clear that Google is moving in several directions, a luxury only Googzillas have:
First, Google says, “We will really, really, cross my fingers and hope to die, share code … just like always.
Second, Google can add one more oxen drawn wagon to its defensive circle. The company will need it when the licensing terms for Android include some very special provisions. Of course, Google may be charitable and not add additional fees to its mobile OS.
Third, it can wave the “we good managers” flag.
Fourth, as the write up correctly notes:
…Darwin, the open source base underneath macOS and iOS, is technically open source, but nobody cares because Apple made it pretty much worthless in and of itself. Anything of value is stripped out and not only developed behind closed doors, but also not released as open source, ensuring Darwin is nothing but a curiosity we sometimes remember exists. Android could be heading in the same direction.
I think the “could” is a hedge. I penciled in “will.” But I am a dinobaby. What do I know?
Stephen E Arnold, March 31, 2025
Apple CEO Chases Chinese AI and Phone Sales
March 31, 2025
While the hullabaloo about making stakes in China’s burgeoning market has died down, Big Tech companies still want pieces of the Chinese pie or dumpling would be a better metaphor here. An example of Big Tech wanting to entrench itself in the ChinBaiese market is Apple. Mac Rumors reports that Apple CEO Tim Cook was recently in China and he complimented start-up Deepseek for its AI models. The story, “Apple CEO Tim Cook Praises China’s Deepseek”
While Cook didn’t say he would pursue a partnership with Deepseek, he was impressed with their AI models. He called them excellent, because Deepseek delivers AI models with high performance capabilities that have lower costs and compute requirements. Deepseek’s research has been compared to OpenAI for achieving similar results by using less resources.
When Cook visited China he reportedly made an agreement with Alibaba Group to integrate its Qwen models into Apple Intelligence. There are also rumors that Apple’s speaking with Baidu about providing LLMs for the Chinese market.
Does this mean that Tim Apple hopes he can use Chinese smart tech in the iPhone and make that more appealing to Chinese users? Hmmmm.
Cook conducted more business during his visit:
In addition to his comments on AI, Cook announced plans to expand Apple’s cooperation with the China Development Research Foundation, alongside continued investments in clean energy development. Throughout his visit, Cook posted updates on the Chinese social media platform Weibo, showcasing a range of Apple products being used in classrooms, creative environments, and more.
Cook’s comments mark a continuation of Apple’s intensified focus on the Chinese market at a time when the company is facing declining iPhone shipments and heightened competition from domestic brands. Apple’s smartphone shipments in China are believed to have fallen by 25% year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2024, while annual shipments dropped 17% to 42.9 million units, placing Apple behind local competitors Vivo and Huawei.”
It’s evident that Apple continues to want a piece of the Chinese dumpling, but also seeks to incorporate Chinese technology into its products. Subtle, Tim Apple, subtle.
Whitney Grace, March 31, 2025
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