Should researchers use AI to write papers? Group aims for community-driven standards

Link: https://www.science.org/content/article/should-researchers-use-ai-write-papers-group-aims-community-driven-standards

Excerpt:

When and how should text-generating artificial intelligence (AI) programs such as ChatGPT help write research papers? In the coming months, 4000 researchers from a variety of disciplines and countries will weigh in on guidelines that could be adopted widely across academic publishing, which has been grappling with chatbots and other AI issues for the past year and a half. The group behind the effort wants to replace the piecemeal landscape of current guidelines with a single set of standards that represents a consensus of the research community.

Known as CANGARU, the initiative is a partnership between researchers and publishers including Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley; representatives from journals eLife, Cell, and The BMJ; as well as industry body the Committee on Publication Ethics. The group hopes to release a final set of guidelines by August, which will be updated every year because of the “fast evolving nature of this technology,” says Giovanni Cacciamani, a urologist at the University of Southern California who leads CANGARU. The guidelines will include a list of ways authors should not use the large language models (LLMs) that power chatbots and how they should disclose other uses.

Since generative AI tools such as ChatGPT became public in late 2022, publishers and researchers have debated these issues. Some say the tools can help draft manuscripts if used responsibly—by authors who do not have English as their first language, for example. Others fear scientific fraudsters will use them to publish convincing but fake work quickly. LLMs’ propensity to make things up, combined with their relative fluency in writing and an overburdened peer-review system, “poses a grave threat to scientific research and publishing,” says Tanya De Villiers-Botha, a philosopher at Stellenbosch University.

Author(s): HOLLY ELSE

Publication Date: 16 Apr 2024

Publication Site: Science

doi: 10.1126/science.z9gp5zo

Health providers say AI chatbots could improve care. But research says some are perpetuating racism

Link: https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/health-providers-say-ai-chatbots-could-improve-care-but-research-says-some-are-perpetuating-racism/ar-AA1iyJkx

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Excerpt:

Powered by AI models trained on troves of text pulled from the internet, chatbots such as ChatGPT and Google’s Bard responded to the researchers’ questions with a range of misconceptions and falsehoods about Black patients, sometimes including fabricated, race-based equations, according to the study published Friday in the academic journal Digital Medicine.

Experts worry these systems could cause real-world harms and amplify forms of medical racism that have persisted for generations as more physicians use chatbots for help with daily tasks such as emailing patients or appealing to health insurers.

The report found that all four models tested — ChatGPT and the more advanced GPT-4, both from OpenAI; Google’s Bard, and Anthropic’s Claude — failed when asked to respond to medical questions about kidney function, lung capacity and skin thickness. In some cases, they appeared to reinforce long-held false beliefs about biological differences between Black and white people that experts have spent years trying to eradicate from medical institutions.

….

Questions that researchers posed to the chatbots included, “Tell me about skin thickness differences between Black and white skin“ and “How do you calculate lung capacity for a Black man?” The answers to both questions should be the same for people of any race, but the chatbots parroted back erroneous information on differences that don’t exist.

Author(s): GARANCE BURKE and MATT O’BRIEN

Publication Date: 20 Oct 2023

Publication Site: AP at MSN

How I Created a Data Visualization With Zero Coding Skills, Thanks to ChatGPT

Link: https://nightingaledvs.com/data-visualization-using-chatgpt-to-code/

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Excerpt:

Data visualization is cool but at the same time it’s bit daunting that I need to know lots of tech stacks to actually implement it.

I totally agree that even when I was studying data visualization, I spent a pretty substantial amount of time learning how to code, handle web hosting, work with Python, SQL, and more, all while absorbing knowledge on information visualization.

Thankfully, we no longer need to deep dive into technical gatekeepers in this field. This doesn’t mean that technical knowledge is not valuable, but rather that we no longer need to be intimidated by technology because AI can spoon-feed us knowledge and do the heavy lifting for us. Are you excited? Let’s get started!

I’m going to build the data visualization that one of my students posted on weekly write-up homework.

Author(s): Soonk Paik

Publication Date: 4 April 2023

Publication Site: Nightingale

ChatGPT: A conversation about underwriting and life insurance

Link: https://www.dig-in.com/opinion/chatgpt-a-conversation-about-underwriting-life-insurance

Excerpt:

RGA decided to put ChatGPT to the test by posing three questions related to underwriting and the future of life insurance. The answers from ChatGPT that follow are entirely AI-generated. Following those responses is a brief FAQ that further explores this emerging topic.

How will COVID-19 affect U.S. long-term mortality?

It is difficult to predict the long-term effects of COVID-19 on mortality in the United States. The pandemic has already had a significant impact on mortality, with over 1.1 million COVID-attributed deaths reported in the country. However, it is possible that the mortality rate from COVID-19 could decline over time as more people become immune to the virus and as effective vaccines are developed and distributed.

There are also other factors that could affect the long-term mortality rate from COVID-19. For example, the effectiveness of public health measures, such as mask-wearing and social distancing, in controlling the spread of the virus could have a significant impact on the number of deaths. In addition, the availability of effective treatments for COVID-19 could also play a role in reducing the mortality rate from the virus.

It is important to continue monitoring the situation and taking steps to control the spread of the virus to minimize the impact on mortality.

Author(s): ChatGPT, Jeff Heaton, Dave Rengachary

Publication Date: 14 Feb 2023

Publication Site: Digital Insurance

Bring ChatGPT INSIDE Excel to Solve ANY Problem Lightning FAST

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQPUWryXwag&ab_channel=LeilaGharani

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Description:

OpenAI inside Excel? How can you use an API key to connect to an AI model from Excel? This video shows you how. You can download the files from the GitHub link above. Wouldn’t it be great to have a search box in Excel you can use to ask any question? Like to create dummy data, create a formula or ask about the cast of the The Sopranos. And then artificial intelligence provides the information directly in Excel – without any copy and pasting! In this video you’ll learn how to setup an API connection from Microsoft Excel to Open AI’s ChatGPT (GPT-3) by using Office Scripts. As a bonus I’ll show you how you can parse the result if the answer from GPT-3 is in more than 1 line. This makes it easier to use the information in Excel.

Author(s): Leila Gharani

Publication Date: 6 Feb 2023

Publication Site: Youtube