Hi Chris! Thanks so much for weighing in. I really appreciate how many folks on this list have added their thoughtful feedback. Responses inline below:
On Sun, Jul 15, 2018 at 3:23 AM, Chris Zielinski <ch...@chriszielinski.com> wrote: > Dear Jason, > > I have been following the discussion of using ai to simplify science with > interest, from my perspective as an a.i. realist and an intellectual > property specialist. I think Heather is correct in pointing out that there > are moral rights issues lurking in this project, especially if you take > seriously your comment "When someone types "do vaccines cause autism?" into > our search box, what we send back could make the world a much better place, > or a much worse one. We best make DARN SURE it is the latter. . " What are > you implying? > First, I should apologize for a typo: it better be the FORMER, not the latter! We are in fact hoping to make the world a BETTER place, it turns out (whether we are succeeding is a different story, but we'll give it our best shot). > 1. That you will not provide an answer? > > 2. That you will not present the literature that makes such an assertion? > > 3. That you will provide an answer based on the literature that makes the > assertion and cap it with a corrective? > In this particular case, we'd hope to show users that 1. a now-retracted 1998 paper suggested a link between the MMR vaccine and autism, BUT 2 a large body of of research now shows that no such link exists. We think it may well be possible for an AI-powered system to deliver that answer. We can certainly find and show that the early paper is retracted. We can certainly find and surface meta-analyses on the topic, which will walk the user through the oodles of legit research on the question. Adding things like topic guides, concept maps, position summaries, research timelines, and so on--well, those are riskier, but we'll be giving them a try as well. But I think they're not actually *necessary* to deliver a responsible answer. We'll likely also be using expert manual curation and explanation in several "hot-topic" domains like this one, especially at first. For these hot-topic questions, AI might be most useful as an assistant to a human curator or annotator...this teamwork approach is often a useful way to get the most out of both artificial and human intelligence (to further abuse the car metaphor, we'd be looking at lane-keeping rather than full autonomous driving). Again, the goal here is NOT to create some magical Star Trek computer that knows and can explain everything. It's not the goal to solve human knowledge. It's rather to *improve* the current state of access to the research. We believe there is LOTS of room for improvement. We'll be using every tool we can to do that. I was a classroom teacher for five years. One thing I learned good and hard there is that most pedagogical plans survive about five minutes with actual learners. You have to adapt. Teaching/explaining is a dialog, a conversation. It's a *collaboration* between teacher/explainer and learner. And so I'm reluctant to get too deep into details before we've brought our most important collaborators on board--the people who will use this system. We'll certainly be working with experts as well (both research domain experts and research communication experts), but the users are most important. That's why we're so obsessed with shipping early and often. We have a *hypothesis* that AI on top of OA can help regular people understand the research literature. But let's go *test that hypothesis*. That's what we'll be doing for the next two years. > The last of these has moral rights implications, I think - analagous to > including my anti-smoking paper in a Benson & Hedges anthology.This is not > just literary criticism, but a deliberate distortion of the authors' > intended message (however wrong the message may have been). Or would you > have a different response? > I think I'm not fully understanding the situation with the smoking anthology. But I can say we're certainly planning to avoid distorting (deliberately or otherwise) the message of any author. Quite the contrary--our goal is to **illuminate** the message of researchers. As part of that, we'll need to put it in the context of the evolving conversations within disciplines. Research is not a monolith. We think it'll be important to show that, honestly and fairly. Again, we're not the Star Trek computer here. This isn't Your One-Stop-Shop For Truth. It's a tool to make OA more meaningful to readers. OA makes papers available. We're giving lay readers a modest set of tools to support them as they work to **understand** those papers. We think that's both more powerful and more responsible then just listing the papers, the way most search tools do today. > There is also the question of dealing with retractions - to stay with > antivax literature, a number of those papers have been withdrawn. Your > search engine would have to be powerful, and your a.i. filters accurate. > Agreed. That's the plan. 😃 > It is probably asking too much of a project like this to set the whole > world to rights. > Agreed. This project is a search engine for OA with some AI features to help motivated readers understand articles more clearly. That's all. Setting the whole world to rights will have to at least wait for a followup grant 😜 You can't answer every possible question relating to health in an > evidence-based way, let alone issues in the social sciences (philosophy > should be fun!). > > I look forward to watching this dvelop - and am ready to lend a hand if if > would be of use. > Thanks very much! We really appreciate that. This is a big project and we are absolutely counting on the fantastic OA community to help it succeed. If it's just us doing this, we will fail for sure. So we'll take you up on that offer! Make sure you're signed up for early access as well (you can sign up at https://gettheresearch.org), since we'll probably use that list to stay in touch with folks who want to help. Best, Jason > Best, > > Chris > > Chris Zielinski > ch...@chriszielinski.com > Blogs: http://ziggytheblue.wordpress.com and > http://ziggytheblue.tumblr.com > Research publications: http://www.researchgate.net > > On 14 July 2018 at 17:49 Jason Priem <ja...@impactstory.org> wrote: > > Thanks very much for your feedback, Henrik! I've included a few comments > inline below: > > On Sat, Jul 14, 2018 at 4:27 AM, Henrik Karlstrøm < > henrik.karlst...@ntnu.no> wrote: > > Hello all, > > I'd like to offer a few comments in this discussion. First I'd like to say > that I think this project is very exciting and very much in line with the > spirit of Open Access, by striving to make available the wealth of the > world's knowledge. This also means to make it understandable. I am sure > that this type of system will one day be important in the dissemination of > expert knowledge. > > > Thanks for the encouragement! We quite agree. As I mentioned to Heather, > we hope that even if our approach to the project is less than successful, > we can generate useful lessons for those who come after. > > At some point, I agree: someone is going to make this type of project > work. And if it's going to work someday, let's try to make it work now! The > sooner the better! Lord knows we sure could use a lot more access to > rigorous, fact-based perspectives right now. > > > > Having said that, there are some important questions that I think would > have to be answered for this project to reap these benefits: > > - First of all I very much agree with the subject line of Heather's > original email. While this is hardly "self-driving car, real-time > processing of multiple source inputs in life-and-death-situations"- hard, > automated parsing of semantic content is plenty difficult, and an area > where a lot of work remains to be done. To take just one example, a new > paper investigating the AI-assisted subject classification methods of the > Dimensions app finds serious problems of reliability and validity of the > procedure, even going so far as to say that "most of the papers seem > misclassified" [1]. The Explanation Engine will need to make some serious > headway in automated semantic analysis to achieve its goals. > > > Agreed. That's the plan...we're certainly aiming to make some "serious > headway in automated semantic analysis." We've got two years and a > generous grant and we're optimistic we can do it. > > That said, it's risky and so we'll be working hard mitigate those risks. > That means starting with components of the Explanation Engine that don't > require fundamental advances in AI, but rather leverage proven tools and > techniques in (we hope) useful new ways. The entity recognition and > annotation is an example of this...that's already working in testing > environments and it's looking great. The plan is to build from there. > > One thing we've got going for us is that articles tend to be quite > structured compared to some forms of text (although the *type* of > structure varies quite widely depending on field-specific norms). This is > an encouraging feature in an otherwise quite challenging problem and we > think it offers a useful way in. > > Another factor working on our side is that we don't actually have to > reduce an article to an arbitrary simplicity level. Many readers can > *almost* understand a scholarly article already, and helping them out is > easier. We're raising scaffolding, not building houses. > > We are working in the zone of proximal development (ZPD) [1], the zone > where a person can succeed *, if they have help*. We're trying expand the > ZPD as wide as we can, for as many people as we can. > > So again, we'll start with the easier, low-risk parts of the > problem...we'll focus on readers who are already pretty well-prepared and > well-motivated, folks like citizen scientists, community college > instructors, and well-informed patients. We'll start with people whose ZPD > already *almost* reaches a given article.We're confident we can > substantially improve the reading experience of these folks, using > completely off-the-shelf technology. > > Then we iterate, building on the lessons users teach us. Over time, we'll > learn to build more and more robust scaffolding, * *based on real > experience with real readers**. Engaging closely with users shows us the > leverage points where we can deploy AI tech most effectively, as well as > the few places where we need to be actually pushing the tech forward. > > This incremental, iterative strategy both reduces risk, and supports very > fast development. We think that over two years, it'll get us to the point > where we reach audiences that would never before have considered reading > the scholarly literature on their own. > > But time, as always, will tell. ⏳😃 > > [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_of_proximal_development > > > > - It is with this in mind that it is so important that the underlying code > from this project is open source and transparent, so that the improvements > or failures that arise from the project can be adopted and adapted by the > wider community. In this way the project can have research benefits in > addition to the possible dissemination/public exposure gains. > > > Couldn't agree more. We've been an open source shop since we got started > at a hackathon seven years ago....that certainly won't be changing for this > project. You can find our code at https://github.com/Impactstory > > > > - While I believe Heather's interpretation of moral rights is incorrect*, > I think you should carefully think about the legal ramifications of a > project like this. At the very least a clear demarcation between the > original work and the derived explanations should be immediately obvious to > users of the application, and an opt-out/takedown mechanism be implemented. > Presumably a way to include and exclude the different parts of the > Explanation Engine could be interesting too, for example by being able to > turn on or off the > > > Agreed. Good points. > > > > These caveats aside, I look forward to seeing the results of your work, > and would like to offer my own CC-licensed work as guinea pig for the > Engine if you need an actual author to give feedback on the quality of the > annotations and summaries that are produced by your concept machine. > > > Thanks very much Henrik, we may take you up on that! > > Best, > Jason > > > > > Regards, > Henrik Karlstrøm > > * The Berne Declarations does NOT unilaterally grant authors the right to > object to modifications of a work that "affects their reputation" - that > would make for example literary criticism or academic debate very hard. For > the Right to Integrity to be violated, it is not enough that the author > feels that there is a violation, the author must be able to demonstrate > prejudice on the part of the modifiers, and demonstrate it "on an objective > standard that is based on public or expert opinion in order to establish > that the author's opinion was reasonable" [2]. Of course, this only matters > in jurisdictions that recognize moral rights. The US, for example, does > not... > > [1] Bornmann, L. Scientometrics (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192 > -018-2855-y > [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prise_de_parole_Inc_v_Gu%C3%A9 > rin,_%C3%A9diteur_Lt%C3%A9e > > > >-----Original Message----- > >From: goal-boun...@eprints.org <goal-boun...@eprints.org> On Behalf Of > >Heather Morrison > >Sent: Friday, July 13, 2018 8:32 PM > >To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) < goal@eprints.org> > >Subject: Re: [GOAL] Why translating all scholarly knowledge for > non-specialists > >using AI is complicated > > > >It is easy to cherry-pick some examples of where this might work and not > be > >problematic. This is useful as an analytic exercise to demonstrate the > potential. > >However it is important to consider and assess negative as well as > positive > >possible consequences. > > > >With respect to violation of author's moral rights, under Berne 6bis > > http://www.wipo.int/treaties/en/text.jsp?file_id=283698 authors have > the right > >to object to certain modifications of their work, that may impact the > authors > >reputation, even after transfer of all economic rights. Reputation is > critical to an > >academic career. > > > >Has anyone conducted research to find out whether academic authors > consider > >Wikipedia annotations to be an acceptable modification of their work? > > > >As an academic author, after using CC licenses permitting modifications > for many > >years, after careful consideration, I have stopped doing this. Your work > for me > >reinforces the wisdom of this decision. I do not wish my work to be > annotated or > >automatically summarized by your project. I suspect that other academic > authors > >will share this perspective. This may include authors who have chosen > liberal > >licenses without realizing that they have inadvertently granted > permission for > >such experiments. > > > >CC licenses with the attribution element include author moral rights and > remedies > >for violation of such rights. > > > >My advice is to limit this experiment to willing participants. For the > avoidance of > >doubt: I object to your group annotating or automatically summarizing my > work. > > > >Thank you for the offer to contribute to your project. These posts to > GOAL are > >my contribution. > > > >best, > > > >Heather Morrison > > > >_____________________________ ___ > >From: goal-boun...@eprints.org < goal-boun...@eprints.org> on behalf of > >Jason Priem < ja...@impactstory.org> > >Sent: Friday, July 13, 2018 1:35:51 PM > >To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) > >Subject: Re: [GOAL] Why translating all scholarly knowledge for > non-specialists > >using AI is complicated > > > >Thanks Heather for your continued comments! Good stuff in there. Some > >responses below: > > > > > > > >HM: Q1: to clarify, we are talking about peer-reviewed journal articles, > right? You > >are planning to annotate journal articles that are written and vetted by > experts > >using definitions that are developed by anyone who chooses to participate > in > >Wikipedia / Wikidata, i.e. annotating works that are carefully vetted by > experts > >using the contributions of non-experts? > > > >Correct. An example may be useful here: > > > >The article "More than 75 percent decline over 27 years in total flying > insect > >biomass in protected areas" was published in 2017 by PLOS ONE [1], and > >appeared in hundreds of news stories and thousands of tweets [2]. It's > open > >access which is great. But if you try to read the article, you run into > sentences like > >this: > > > >"Here, we used a standardized protocol to measure total insect biomass > using > >Malaise traps, deployed over 27 years in 63 nature protection areas in > Germany > >(96 unique location-year combinations) to infer on the status and trend > of local > >entomofauna." > > > >Even as a somewhat well-educated person, I sure don't know what a Malaise > trap > >is, or what entomofauna is. The more I trip over words and concepts like > this, the > >less I want to read the article. I feel like it's just...not for me. > > > >But Wiktionary can tell me entomofauna means "insect fauna," [3] and > Wikipedia > >can show me a picture of a Malaise trap (it looks like a tent, turns out) > [4]. > > > >We're going to bring those kinds of descriptions and definitions right > next to the > >text, so it will feel a bit more like this article IS for me. This isn't > going to make > >the article magically easy to understand, but we think it will help open > a door that > >makes engaging with the literature a bit more inviting. Our early tests > with this > >are very promising. > > > >That said, we're certainly going to be iterating on it a lot, and we're > not actually > >attached to any particular implementation details. The goal is to help > laypeople > >access the literature, and do it responsibly. If this turns out to be > impossible with > >this approach, then we'll move on to another one. > > > >For us, the key to the Explanation Engine idea is to be modular and > flexible, using > >multiple layered techniques, in order to reduce risk and increase speed. > > > > > >[1] http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal. > pone.0185809 > >[2] https://www.altmetric.com/details/27610705 > >[3] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/entomofauna > >[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaise_trap > > > > > > > > > >Q2: who made the decision that this is safe, and how was this decision > made? > > > >Hm, perhaps I should've been more careful in my original statement. > Apologies. > >There's certainly no formal Decision here...I'm just suggesting that we > think the > >risk of spreading misinformation is relatively low with this approach. > That's why > >we'll start there. But the proof will need to be in the pudding, of > course. We'll > >need to implement this, test it, and so on. > > > >Maybe I'm wrong and this is actually a horrible, dangerous idea. > > > >If so, we'll find out, and take it from there. Thanks for letting us know > you are > >concerned it's not safe. We' take that seriously and so we'll make sure > we are > >evaluating this feature carefully. If you're interested in helping with > that, we'd > >love to have your input as well...drop me a line off-list and we can talk > about how > >to work together on it. > > > > > >If the author has not given permission, this is a violation of the > author's moral > >rights under copyright. This includes all CC licensed works except CC-0. > > > >I'm not sure I see how this would be true? We are not modifying the text > or > >failing to give credit to the original author, but rather creating a > commentary on > >it...quite like one might do if discussing the paper in a journal club. > > > >I am not opposed to your project, just the assumption that a two-year > project is > >sufficient to create a real-world system to translate all scholarly > knowledge for > >the lay reader. > > > >Makes sense. You may be right...could be a quixotic errand. We will do > our best, > >and hopefully whatever we come up with will be a step in the right > direction, at > >least. I think something like this could make the world a better place, > and maybe > >if we aren't able to achieve it we can at least help give some ideas to > the people > >who ultimately do. > > > > > > A cautious and iterative approach is wise; however this is not feasible > in the > >context of a two-year grant. May I suggest a small pilot project? Try > this with a > >few articles in an area where at least one member of your team has a > doctorate. > >Take the time to evaluate the summaries. If they look okay to your team, > plan a > >larger evaluation project involving other experts and the lay readers you > are > >aiming to engage (because what an expert thinks a summary says may not be > the > >same as how a non-expert would interpret the same summary). > > > >I think this sounds great! Your plan is very much what we have in mind to > do. And > >then we will continue from there on the "cautious iterative approach" to > rolling > >out features. I think the only area where we differ is in the > timeline...sounds like > >you don't project that we can get everything we need to done in a > two-year time > >frame. > > > >You may be right. Time will tell. Historically, Impactstory has been able > to get > >stuff done pretty fast, but once again, the proof will be in the pudding > 😃. We're > >certainly excited and motivated and will be doing our best! > > > > > > > >Thank you for posting openly about the approach and for the opportunity > to > >comment. > > > >Thank you for your thoughtful comments! > >j > > > > > >best, > > > >Heather Morrison > >Associate Professor, School of Information Studies, University of Ottawa > >Professeur Agrégé, École des Sciences de l'Information, Université > d'Ottawa > > heather.morri...@uottawa.ca< mailto: heather.morri...@uottawa.ca> > > https://uniweb.uottawa.ca/?lang=en#/members/706 > > > >_ > > > >_____________________________ __________________ > >GOAL mailing list > > GOAL@eprints.org<mailto: GOAL@eprints.org> > > http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal > > > > > > > > > >-- > >Jason Priem, co-founder > >Impactstory< http://impactstory.org/>: We make tools to power the Open > >Science revolution follow at @jasonpriem< http://twitter.com/jasonpriem> > and > >@impactstory< http://twitter.com/impactstory> > > > >_____________________________ __________________ > >GOAL mailing list > > GOAL@eprints.org > > http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal > > ______________________________ _________________ > GOAL mailing list > GOAL@eprints.org > http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal > > > > > -- > Jason Priem, co-founder > Impactstory <http://impactstory.org/>: We make tools to power the Open > Science revolution > follow at @jasonpriem <http://twitter.com/jasonpriem> and @impactstory > <http://twitter.com/impactstory> > _______________________________________________ > GOAL mailing list > GOAL@eprints.org > http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal > > -- Jason Priem, co-founder Impactstory <http://impactstory.org/>: We make tools to power the Open Science revolution follow at @jasonpriem <http://twitter.com/jasonpriem> and @impactstory <http://twitter.com/impactstory>
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