Thanks for sharing your concerns and helping us be more calibrated on the value of this study.
I agree that a control group is vital for good science. Nonetheless, I think that such an experiment is valuable and informative, even if it doesn’t meet the high standards required by many professional science disciplines.
I believe in the necessity of acting under uncertainty. Even with its flaws, this study is sufficient evidence for us to want to enact temporary regulation at the same time as we work to provide more robust evaluations.
The biggest critique for me isn’t that there isn’t a control group, but that they don’t have a limitations section that suggests follow-up experiments with a control group. A lot can be forgiven if you’re open and transparent about it, particularly when a field is new.
I’ve only skimmed this post, but I suspect your principle of substitution has a wrong framing. LLM’s can make the situation worse even if a human could easily access the information through other means, see beware trivial inconveniences. I suspect that neglecting this factor causes you to significantly underrate the risks here.
Copying my comment over here:
Thanks for sharing your concerns and helping us be more calibrated on the value of this study.
I agree that a control group is vital for good science. Nonetheless, I think that such an experiment is valuable and informative, even if it doesn’t meet the high standards required by many professional science disciplines.
I believe in the necessity of acting under uncertainty. Even with its flaws, this study is sufficient evidence for us to want to enact temporary regulation at the same time as we work to provide more robust evaluations.
The biggest critique for me isn’t that there isn’t a control group, but that they don’t have a limitations section that suggests follow-up experiments with a control group. A lot can be forgiven if you’re open and transparent about it, particularly when a field is new.
I’ve only skimmed this post, but I suspect your principle of substitution has a wrong framing. LLM’s can make the situation worse even if a human could easily access the information through other means, see beware trivial inconveniences. I suspect that neglecting this factor causes you to significantly underrate the risks here.