I remember we when I was 42.
But the significance of it is from The Hitchhikers Guide series. The entire purpose “Deep Thought,” Planet Earth, itself, was to determine the meaning of Live, The Universe, and Everything.
After millions of years of work, it finished its research, and returned the answer — 42
I was reminded of this by reading this from Reason. The author who’d come in planning to write about the Dutch guilds as early versions of capitalist cooperation, asked several of the commonly-used AI instances when capitalism started.
All provided different answers, but none touched on what he wanted to write about.
I asked Microsoft Bing: “When was capitalism invented?” Bing said: “1776.”
An answer longer than 42, certainly, but still not correct.
It made me think of my time in college. There was a final in Business Law. One of the questions was pretty straightforward, and I eagerly went to work on it.
I used probably four Blue Books writing my response. Just me and my blue-black inked fountain pen.
I left the exam feeling great about what I’d written.
Being that it was finals, I didn’t see the professor in-person again. She did send me my grade via whatever messaging system the university was using in the dark basically pre-web days of the Internets.
Her response was something along the lines of “Well-reasoned using tort law. You should have used the UCC. C.“
I ended up with a B in the class, but it certainly didn’t give me the relaxing summer I’d been expecting; it still stings today about a quarter-century later.
But it ties back into the AI discussion because I think the author really showed the limitations.
So I wonder if there’s going to need to be two additional questions when you suspect someone’s used AI to do research.
While AI tools did you use?
Which questions did you ask? Verbatim. Justify how/why you chose those questions.
Bubuhbut they’re takin’ our jerbs!
No, there’s ways to use the tools. You just have to be savvy enough to ask the right questions, use multiple tools, and draw conclusions based on the varying results you collected.
This is not a one-shot effort.
But it also speaks to things like the scientific method where you publish everything you did so that others can reproduce your work.
THAT’S PROPRITERY INFORMATION.
No. No it’s not.
That sound you just heard was the sound of thousands of 80s and 90s MBAs’ heads exploding.