DailyDirt: Problems With Peer Reviewed Publications

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Peer review isn't exactly a sexy topic, but it's an essential part of academic publishing -- and it may need to change a bit to keep up with the times. Peer review is typically a thankless chore that is distributed among academics working in a network of related fields, and sometimes personal politics can enter into the process if the subject matter is obscure enough. Misconduct in peer review doesn't usually get the same kind of coverage as various journalistic scandals (eg. Rolling Stone, Buzzfeed, etc), but the damages done can be even more significant to society.

• Peer review processes aren't free of corruption -- with some third party agencies offering services that fake reviews or try to improve a paper's odds of being published in other unsavory ways. The publication system for scientific work doesn't seem to have a great way to deal with this issue besides retracting (instead of correcting) articles published in error. Dozens of papers have been retracted by BioMed Central recently, but the problems with peer review appear to be much more widespread. [url]
• Some scientific papers are published for a fee -- with absolutely no quality control whatsoever. The impressively-titled International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology accepted a paper that consisted of nothing but "Get me off your fucking mailing list" repeated over and over. [url]
• Paying for expedited peer review sounds sketchy, right? Rubriq's peer-review service promised a review within 3 weeks or your money back -- but perhaps these kinds of services should be subject to yet another round of reviews. [url]
• Can publishers try to automate the detection of fake papers and poorly-reviewed articles before they turn into embarrassing mistakes? Artificial intelligence just isn't that good, but perhaps software will make it harder for people to detect shady predatory publications. [url]

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Filed Under: academia, journals, media, natural language processing, peer review, publications, retractions, rubriq, scandals

DailyDirt: Alternatives To The Turing Test

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Artificial intelligence research has made quite a few advances, but the goalposts are always moving back. Not too long ago, people thought that games like chess and poker were far too difficult for software to play as well as humans. There are still a few games that computers can't quite play as well as humans, but that list is getting smaller all the time. Software with "general intelligence" is still a bit beyond our reach, but the Singularity could happen any moment now.

• The Turing Test has made it into the mainstream media, but to the annoyance of artificial intelligence researchers, the interpretation of what this test actually demonstrates has been grossly misunderstood. There are several proposals for Turing Test alternatives that are more resistant to sneaky chat bots, but maybe we should try to figure out what human intelligence is before we devise a test for non-humans. [url]
• The Winograd Schema challenge is slightly improved kind of test for linguistic comprehension. Nuance, the speech recognition firm, is sponsoring a $25,000 grand prize for solutions that perform comparably to human responses. The first question is NOT: "You're in a desert walking along in the sand when all of the sudden you look down, and you see a tortoise, it's crawling toward you. You reach down, you flip the tortoise over on it's back. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can’t, not without your help. But you're not helping. Why is that?" [url]
• Eugene Goostman is the name of a simulated 13yo Ukrainian boy that fooled some people into thinking it was a real human. Artificial intelligence isn't supposed to just fool people. This chat bot might have fooled some humans in a 5 minute long conversation, but it's not actually revolutionary. Someday we might have software that can converse naturally for indefinite periods of time, but we're not there yet. [url]

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Filed Under: ai, artificial intelligence, chat bot, cognitive computing, eugene goostman, general intelligence, iq, natural language processing, speech recognition, turing test, voight-kampff, winograd schema challenge
Companies: nuance

DailyDirt: Modern Computer Dating

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

There are search engines for just about everything. Computers help people find all sorts of things faster and easier, so it's not surprising that computer dating is decades old (and started out with punch cards). Technology has gotten a lot better, but has online dating really improved that much?

• Online dating sites claim to be able to find soul mates, but studies suggest they can only provide introductions -- and more often than not, they instill a "shopping mindset" which is not conducive to building lasting relationships. Some psychologists even doubt the possibility of creating algorithms that could successfully match people for real romance. (But experts also scoffed at the first chess-playing computers, too.) [url]
• In 2005, Steven Carter, the director of research at eHarmony, described how his work to create predictive models for compatibility became the basis of his dream job. Carter is probably a bit biased, so where is some peer review for eHarmony's research? [url]
• Perhaps some intense linguistic analysis can predict dating success. Apparently, people who have similar speech patterns are more likely to date each other. Watch your use of pronouns, folks.... [url]
• To discover more interesting tech-related content, check out what's currently floating around the StumbleUpon universe. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: algorithms, compatibility, dating, natural language processing, nlp, psychology, relationships
Companies: eharmony