As you may have already heard, AI is making headlines, especially with ChatGPT, which uses natural language processing (NLP) to create writing that feels like real speech. While it’s certainly impressive how fast these algorithms have come, they still aren’t perfect. There are always new ways for AI to mess up. For example, one recent study from Harvard University found that ChatGPT was able to write an entire academic paper using just a few short paragraphs. Now, two researchers from Cornell University have used this same technology to write an entire paper on their own…but only after hours of work. In fact, they wrote the paper themselves with the assistance of ChatGPT.
On Wednesday, March 20th, the team published their paper titled “A Method for generating the introduction section of a scientific article using a neural network algorithm,” in the journal Nature Computational Science. They were inspired by other studies that use NLP to write papers, such as those done in 2017, that took around 11–12 months. After compiling the text from previous efforts and analyzing its structure, they were left with just over 400 words — far short of what would be needed for the typical piece of academic writing. Eventually, they decided to try and figure out what was missing and turned to ChatGPT. With the tech giant at hand, they fed the program prompts to rewrite their paper into something more conversational, but not quite human-like.
Since then, the computer generated almost everything from scratch, including the introduction, conclusion, references, tables, figures, and even some additional paragraphs. The full version of the paper can be seen here and all the code used to do so is available online. However, while the results look impressive, we wondered if there were any downsides to taking advantage of the tools to complete such tasks. Fortunately, the answer seems to be yes — but it also means that some areas could use improvement.
One area where they say they need improvements is the way in which they handle citations. According to the study, only about 21% of their sources are cited in their paper. Another issue highlighted in their paper is the fact that the authors were forced to manually edit all their sources, which can take time. This is unfortunate because many people rely on peer-reviewed journals and cite them directly in their papers. Nevertheless, it does provide a great opportunity for future research and should definitely be considered.
In addition, the authors highlight another issue that would need to be addressed: the length of the paper. Because each sentence is composed of multiple paragraphs, the overall message can easily become lost at times, especially when trying to follow along with the author’s argument. If the sections are too long, readers might miss important information or just feel overwhelmed. Overall, the method appears to be sound, but it could be improved for future reference.
As previously mentioned, some aspects of the paper may seem impressive, but others could feel more like copycat work. One thing they did right was to give ChatGPT enough freedom to create their unique structure, such as the inclusion of subsections or subsections within subsections. By doing this, they were able to make their paper stand out among similar ones, creating an original style that is different from their peers. Additionally, despite having ChatGPT write their paper, the authors did not have to spend much time editing it since the result was self-explanatory. Despite this, it was important for their research to be validated, which is why the Cornell researchers are keen to further analyze the work.
Despite the shortcomings highlighted, the work by the Cornell researchers is quite impressive, and deserves credit for pushing forward the development of AI-powered writing. Their latest research is also crucial in understanding how these systems can process large amounts of text and find patterns in order to produce quality output.
The authors are working on updating their approach using both ChatGPT and machine learning, but a final decision regarding that will depend on whether or not they want to include any kind of paraphrasing. Regardless, they are moving in the right direction and hope their contribution helps others develop these technologies.
.jpg)
0 Comments