TechTakes

2283 readers

102 users here now

Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.

For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

dgerard@awful.systems

Oxford pretends AI benchmarks are science, not marketing (pivot-to-ai.com)

submitted 3 days ago by dgerard@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems

5 comments fedilink hide all child comments

How could all these benchmarks be fake, it’s a mystery

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcYZN6sTZjQ&list=UU9rJrMVgcXTfa8xuMnbhAEA - video
https://pivottoai.libsyn.com/20251106-oxford-pretends-ai-benchmarks-are-science-not-marketing - podcast

time: 6 min 16 sec

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 14 points 3 days ago (4 children)

Reasoning With Machines doesn’t work on reasoning, really. It’s almost entirely large language models — chatbots. Because that’s where the money — sorry, the industry interest — is. But this paper got into the NeurIPS 2025 conference.

A reminder that the NeurIPS FAQ for reviewers says that "interactions with LLMs" are an acceptable way "to enhance your understanding of certain concepts". What other big conferences are there... AAAI 2026, you say?

AAAI-26 will follow a two-phase reviewing process as in previous years, with two additions: an additional AI-generated review in Phase 1, and an AI-generated summary of the discussions at the end of the discussion phase. The AI-generated content is being used as part of a pilot program to evaluate the ability of AI tools to assist in the peer review process.

I'm gonna say it: The entire "artificial intelligence"/"machine learning" research field is corrupt. They have institutionally accepted the bullshit fountain as a tool. It doesn't matter if they're only using chatbots as a "pilot program"; they've bought into the ideology. They've granted fashtech a seat at the bar and forced all the other customers to shake its hand.

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 8 points 2 days ago

i have a pile of long winded comments and emails pretending this tech can be apolitical and how dare i impugn their hard work and science

there's a reason i moderate against fucking idiots. you have a billion other loungeroom floors on the internet to piss on

[–] blakestacey@awful.systems 9 points 3 days ago

Whatever marginal utility genAI has in mathematics, like being a shitty version of a semantic search engine, is outweighed by the damage it is doing to critical thought at large. "Ooh, the bus to the math conference runs so smoothly on this leaded gasoline!"

[–] BlueMonday1984@awful.systems 6 points 3 days ago

I’m gonna say it: The entire “artificial intelligence”/“machine learning” research field is corrupt. They have institutionally accepted the bullshit fountain as a tool. It doesn’t matter if they’re only using chatbots as a “pilot program”; they’ve bought into the ideology. They’ve granted fashtech a seat at the bar and forced all the other customers to shake its hand.

Abso-fucking-lutely. Oxford's latest "research paper" isn't marketing - its propaganda. Propaganda for bullshit fountains, and for the ideology which endorses them.

[–] o7___o7@awful.systems 1 points 2 days ago

unending scream