MIT has announced that a paper on the impact of artificial intelligence on research and innovation should be “withdrawn” from public discourse due to concerns over its “integrity.”
This paper, titled “Artificial Intelligence: Scientific Discovery and Product Innovation,” was authored by a doctoral candidate in the university’s Economics program. It claimed to show that the introduction of an AI tool into a large-but-unidentified materials science lab led to the discovery of more materials and more patent filings, but at the cost of reducing researchers’ satisfaction with their work.
MIT economics Daron Acemoglu and (who recently
David Autor and the Nobel Prize winnerboth praised this paper last year.
Author telling the Wall Street Journal (19459044) he was “floored.”
MIT’s announcement ( ) on Friday, Acemoglu & Autor described the paper, saying that it was “already well-known and discussed extensively in literature on AI and Science, even though the paper has not yet been published in a refereed journal.”
According to the WSJ (19459044), a computer scientist who had experience in materials science contacted Acemoglu in January with concerns. They brought these concerns to MIT and prompted an internal review. MIT has said that it cannot reveal the results of the review due to student privacy laws. However, the author is no longer at MIT.
A preprint version of the paper and the initial coverage of the story identify him as Aidan Toner Rodgers. TechCrunch has contacted Toner-Rodgers to get his comment.
MIT says it also requested that the paper be withdrawn both from The Quarterly Journal of Economics where it was submitted for publishing, and from arXiv, the preprint website. MIT claims that only the authors of a paper are allowed to submit arXiv requests. However, “to date, this author has not submitted a request.”
Anthony Ha, TechCrunch weekend editor, is a tech reporter at Adweek, he was formerly VP and senior editor at VentureBeat, he was formerly Deputy Editor for Hollister Free Lance, and he worked as VC firm’s content director. He has worked as a reporter for Adweek, a senior at VentureBeat and a reporter for the Hollister-Free Lance. He was also vice president of content in a VC company. He lives in New York City. View Bio
