MIT says that as a result of considerations concerning the “integrity” of a high-profile paper concerning the results of synthetic intelligence on analysis and innovation, the paper ought to be “withdrawn from public discourse.”
The paper in query, “Synthetic Intelligence, Scientific Discovery, and Product Innovation,” was written by a doctoral pupil within the college’s economics program. It claimed to point out that the introduction of an AI instrument right into a large-but-unidentified supplies science lab led to the invention of extra supplies and extra patent filings, however at the price of lowering researchers’ satisfaction with their work.
MIT economists Daron Acemoglu (who not too long ago gained the Nobel Prize) and David Autor each praised the paper final yr, with Autor telling the Wall Avenue Journal he was “floored.” In a press release included in MIT’s announcement on Friday, Acemoglu and Autor described the paper as “already recognized and mentioned extensively within the literature on AI and science, regardless that it has not been revealed in any refereed journal.”
Nevertheless, the 2 economists mentioned they now have “no confidence within the provenance, reliability or validity of the information and within the veracity of the analysis.”
Based on the WSJ, a pc scientist with expertise in supplies science approached Acemoglu and Autor with considerations in January. They introduced these considerations to MIT, resulting in an inside assessment.
MIT says that as a result of pupil privateness legal guidelines, it can not disclose the outcomes of that assessment, however the paper’s creator is “not at MIT.” And whereas the college’s announcement doesn’t title the creator, each a preprint model of the paper and the preliminary press protection establish him as Aidan Toner-Rodgers. (TechCrunch has reached out to Toner-Rodgers for remark.)
MIT additionally says it has requested the paper be withdrawn from The Quarterly Journal of Economics, the place it was submitted for publication, and from the preprint web site arXiv. Apparently, solely a paper’s authors are speculated to submit arXiv withdrawal requests, however MIT says “thus far, the creator has not performed so.”
