- The above adage/maxim/axiom has been exhorted with such clarity, passion, and conviction over millennia that the same holds true even in the present times. The modernity defined present-day world has undergone mindboggling changes is stating the obvious. This holds true since humanity started evolving on the back of some of the most defining innovations/inventions/endeavours/development/growth perpetually from time to time, hugely benefiting humankind. While we reap the fruits of the hard work of enterprising individuals, duly backed by the authorities of the time, human ingenuity, born of the quest to best the unknown from the dark wombs of Mother Nature, persists.
PC: AI CERTs
- None showcases these typically characteristic traits more than those immensely talented and driven individuals always on the lookout to break the barriers and scale the summit with a single-minded determination. However, we are also witnesses to how the human mind endeavours to cut corners to achieve success, even without hesitating to adopt diabolical measures. History is witness to such innumerable instances. Let’s dwelve further to comprehend the subject matter by comparing the fields of athletics and science. Make no mistake, in athletics, steroids (shortcut) are no match for training and spirit (goals/objectives). Likewise, in science, AI hallucinations cannot beat research. We are living in the golden age of artificial enhancement, and things are weird.
PC: LinkedIn
- In science, the cathedral of human reason, AI-hallucinated citations have grown 1100% since ChatGPT’s public release. The peer review process has thrown up its hands. Down this path, once the integrity of its references is really shaken, scientific literature will lose all dependability. In sports, the Enhanced Games in Los Angeles, aka the Olympics of Steroids, offered the proposition that athletes should be their most chemically optimized superhuman selves. Yet, the clean records are held. Isn’t the obsession with shortcuts to greatness utterly cringe? The AI citation mills are a kind of intellectual performance-enhancing drug, which inflates the stats while hollowing out the science. The Enhanced Games turned out to be neither a sci-fi leap forward nor a match for standard world-class training. Conventional over superficial technological prowess, anyone?
PC: MIMIT Health
- Nonetheless, what both these stories share is an anxious soul – a creeping suspicion that human effort, unassisted, is somehow no longer enough. The researcher who reads their sources is at a disadvantage, and the athlete who simply trains is running the wrong race. This isn’t a nice snapshot of the human condition, that given any technology capable of making us genuinely better, people will first use it to just make themselves look better. They will actively pollute the foundation of the future of science because they’re too lazy to open a second tab and check if a paper exists. But Usain Bolt and Alan Turing didn’t move the needle of human potential by cheating the clock. True ambition means doing heavy lifting. And going through the grind. Simple.
