AI and the Enclosure of the Scientific Commons

Posted by jrepinc 1 hour ago

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Comments

Comment by bennettnate5 54 minutes ago

> The scientific literature can be viewed as an "information commons:" an intangible resource that "no one owns

Springer would like a word

Comment by Glyptodon 9 minutes ago

Admin, maybe merge with submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50187248

Comment by contemporary343 43 minutes ago

One simple way to understand how this is currently manifesting is the administration's severe, and really unprecedented, defunding of basic science at NSF (likely in unconstitutional defiance of Congress' appropriations to specific NSF directorates). Instead the way the funding has been redirected (by the White House OSTP) is based on the assumption that future knowledge will be exclusively AI (sorry SI) generated, so humans not needed.

China, on the other hand, seems to be doubling down on fundamental research, including announcing these changes:

https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202609/1371583.shtml

and this: https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3368750/chin...

Comment by Legend2440 12 minutes ago

I think this is completely unrelated.

This administration thinks science is 'woke' because it says things that disagree with him. Many of these funding cuts were explicitly politically motivated, e.g. they specifically targeted research about diversity, gender, or vaccines.

It's not about AI, it's about removing funding from liberal causes and giving it to conservative causes.

Comment by 10111001 25 minutes ago

> Instead the way the funding has been redirected (by the White House OSTP) is based on the assumption that future knowledge will be exclusively AI (sorry SI) generated, so humans not needed.

Can you go into more detail about that? My impression is the real reason the Trump administration has defunded basic science (and so much else) is an unholy combination of "government bad" libertarianism and the belief the funding was going to their ideological opponents.

I feel that and use of AI to justify the redirection is most likely post-hoc.

Comment by whatshisface 14 minutes ago

Going by the public announcements, the original plan was to cut science funding but once Congress said "no," the backup plan became directing it towards non - human - scientist items like facilities operations and the Genesis program.

Comment by Herring 15 minutes ago

This is not that difficult. It's just like what happened to physical fitness/obesity after the invention of the car. Go look at countries that do it reasonably well (ie not the US). Copy exactly what they do, wholesale.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPUlgSRn6e0 [Not Just Bikes]