MIT disavows doctoral student paper on AI’s productivity benefits
MIT says that due to concerns about the ‘integrity’ of a high -profile paper about the effects of artificial intelligence on the productivity of a laboratory for material sciences, the article ‘must be withdrawn from the public discourse’.
The paper in question ‘Artificial Intelligence, Scientific Discovery and Product Innovation’, was written by a doctoral student in the university’s economic program. It claimed to show that the introduction of an AI tool into a large but non-intended Materials Science Lab led to the discovery of more materials and more patent applications, but at the expense of reducing researchers’ satisfaction with their work.
MIT Economists Daron Acemoglu (who recently won the Nobel Prize) and David Autor both praised the newspaper last year, with Autor tells the Wall Street Journal He was “floor”. Included in a statement in MIT’s announcement On Friday, Acemoglu and Autor the newspaper described as “already known and discussed extensively in the literature on AI and science, although it was not published in a referred magazine.”
However, the two economists said that they now “have no confidence in the origin, reliability or validity of the data and in the truthfulness of the study.”
According to the WsjA computer scientist with experience in material science approached Acemoglu and car with worry in January. They brought those worries to MIT, which led to an internal assessment.
MIT says that because of the privacy laws of students, it cannot reveal the results of that assessment, but the author of the newspaper is “no longer with MIT”. And although the university’s announcement does not mention the student, both, both A preprint version of the paper And the first coverage of the press identify the author as Aidan-Toner-Rodgers. (WAN has contacted Toner-Rodgers for comment.)
MIT also says that it has asked to be withdrawn from the Paper from the Quarterly Journal of Economics, where it was submitted for publication, and from the Preprint website Arxiv. Apparently only the authors of a paper are able to submit Arxiv in withdrawal requests, but MIT says, “To date, the author has not done this.”
