WotC Would you buy WotC products produced or enhanced with AI?

[EzekielRaiden]

What's STEM, in this context?

Science(=physical sciences), Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.

Essentially, the "hard science" fields, ones that are portrayed as being pure quantitative with nothing qualitative (a falsehood, but only mostly wrong, not entirely wrong), as opposed to the "soft" science fields and "social" fields (social science, the humanities, the arts, etc.), which are portrayed as being pure qualitative with nothing quantitative (also a falsehood, and much closer to being entirely wrong.)

Economics and medicine kinda don't quite fit into either category, as they contain extensive amounts of both quantitative and qualitative reasoning, and partake of methods from both camps.

As a STEM guy who has also studied philosophy (which is among the humanities, but connects to mathematics, which isn't!), we desperately need better non-STEM education. STEM education isn't nearly as badly-off as the humanities, because it has profit motive. People want to do well and employers want productive, worthwhile employees. No such pressure on how we teach our children to critically analyze arguments, to examine their own biases and how those biases may be addressed, or to understand an idea or tradition or method they don't use and haven't encountered before. I fear the age of Men Without Chests may already be upon us.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

What's STEM, in this context?

Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, in education lingo.

 

[ColinChapman]

I voted no, not that WotC actually produce anything that interests me.

I am even more vehemently against the use of AI Art and Writing in the case of companies such as WotC than in regard to smaller publishers, because the bigger companies can afford to pay creative folks. While I don't agree with the use of AI, I can absolutely understand why some smaller, struggling, independent creators are easily tempted to use it; a company such as WotC does not have even that excuse.

 

[The Firebird]

Making RPGs easier to run for a subset of the gaming population is also not comparable to things like curing cancer or powering global economies or even allowing households to do their taxes without basic math errors bringing the IRS down on them. It is best to keep this stuff in the context of the discussion.

I have some news about the applications of LLMS

 

[Umbran]

STEM education isn't nearly as badly-off as the humanities, because it has profit motive. People want to do well and employers want productive, worthwhile employees. No such pressure on how we teach our children to critically analyze arguments, to examine their own biases and how those biases may be addressed, or to understand an idea or tradition or method they don't use and haven't encountered before. I fear the age of Men Without Chests may already be upon us.

Examining biases is one of the items that solidly straddles STEM and non-STEM subjects. After all, the major point of what we refer to as the "scientific method" is to remove biases from our results, and understand how much other bias might remain, even if we don't know precisely what the bias is!

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Examining biases is one of the items that solidly straddles STEM and non-STEM subjects. After all, the major point of what we refer to as the "scientific method" is to remove biases from our results, and understand how much other bias might remain, even if we don't know precisely what the bias is!

The problem is, when you remind a STEM researcher that "who decides what questions are worth asking?" and "why did you throw out that trial, but kept this trial?" are questions where bias leaks in and where the scientific method is dead silent about how they should be answered, they tend to get really really mad at you.

I would know. I've been in the lab, asking those very questions, and pointing out that the former is shaped by personal preferences and social norms etc. etc., while the latter is pure intuition barely even guided by statistical assessment. (I can't tell you how many experiments--whether classroom assignments or elective investigation--involved throwing out data because "something must've been/gone wrong", without any methodological explanation for doing so.)

Which is exactly what I mean. The unshakable faith in "the scientific method" as a tool for divining truth from falsity is, itself, one of those biases that needs to be carefully examined. Science is a wonderful thing and extremely good at uncovering truths, or at least, improving our awareness in objectively useful ways. But it is not the only road to truth (which many of my STEM colleagues would scoff at even at the best of times), nor is it the lionized, "heroic" (to use Latour's term) image scientists desperately cling to--an image that, now shattered, has directly contributed to the widespread distrust of science, which we desperately need to overcome.

Latour and his colleagues badly botched their efforts at critique. But the critique wasn't entirely wrong, either--and now we're all paying the price for the failure to heed it until it was too late.

 

[Belen]

As a STEM guy who has also studied philosophy (which is among the humanities, but connects to mathematics, which isn't!), we desperately need better non-STEM education. STEM education isn't nearly as badly-off as the humanities, because it has profit motive. People want to do well and employers want productive, worthwhile employees. No such pressure on how we teach our children to critically analyze arguments, to examine their own biases and how those biases may be addressed, or to understand an idea or tradition or method they don't use and haven't encountered before. I fear the age of Men Without Chests may already be upon us.

I agree. Humanities has gotten worse over the years and no longer emphasizes critical thinking or analysis.

I grew up being constantly told to examine your beliefs and to constantly examine and critique your arguments. It's funny, my bosses just sold their company and they are employees now and have not been an employee in decades. They told me that they were impressed by my "grace" in accepting feedback because it is difficult now that they are getting criticized. Personally, I think it is just that I never believe that I am 100% right and I am constantly seeking feedback and better ways to do things.

Then again, I save my joys for debate and argument for ENWorld where I do like to take stances or just debate.

Sadly, I see a lot of education in humanities just no longer teach critical thought or "well-rounded" education and the lack of critical thought leads to other problems.

 

[Belen]

The problem is, when you remind a STEM researcher that "who decides what questions are worth asking?" and "why did you throw out that trial, but kept this trial?" are questions where bias leaks in and where the scientific method is dead silent about how they should be answered, they tend to get really really mad at you.

I would know. I've been in the lab, asking those very questions, and pointing out that the former is shaped by personal preferences and social norms etc. etc., while the latter is pure intuition barely even guided by statistical assessment. (I can't tell you how many experiments--whether classroom assignments or elective investigation--involved throwing out data because "something must've been/gone wrong", without any methodological explanation for doing so.)

Which is exactly what I mean. The unshakable faith in "the scientific method" as a tool for divining truth from falsity is, itself, one of those biases that needs to be carefully examined. Science is a wonderful thing and extremely good at uncovering truths, or at least, improving our awareness in objectively useful ways. But it is not the only road to truth (which many of my STEM colleagues would scoff at even at the best of times), nor is it the lionized, "heroic" (to use Latour's term) image scientists desperately cling to--an image that, now shattered, has directly contributed to the widespread distrust of science, which we desperately need to overcome.

Latour and his colleagues badly botched their efforts at critique. But the critique wasn't entirely wrong, either--and now we're all paying the price for the failure to heed it until it was too late.

Many scientists have fundamental ignorance of good methodology or statistics. I work in STM peer review and your would not believe that studies that arrive with fundamental methodological issues. We point it out in peer review, but by the time the data arrives, it is already too late to course correct.

This happens in my grant-funded studies all the time. We are constantly asking "why did you set up the study this way?" My editors go back to the people who reviewed the grant and ask "why did you approve the study with these method errors?"

I find it frightening the amount of science based on studies using horribly flawed methodologies.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Sadly, I see a lot of education in humanities just no longer teach critical thought or "well-rounded" education and the lack of critical thought leads to other problems.

Out of curiosity, what do they teach instead in high school? Or was the topic just dropped out of the curriculum where you live to shorten study hours/introduce other subjects than humanities?

 

[The Firebird]

The problem is, when you remind a STEM researcher that "who decides what questions are worth asking?" and "why did you throw out that trial, but kept this trial?" are questions where bias leaks in and where the scientific method is dead silent about how they should be answered, they tend to get really really mad at you.

"Why did you throw out that trial but kept this trial" is a very basic question that any scientist doing proper work should be able to answer. Maybe some scientists do a bad job of it. But it's very much in the realm of STEM education.

"What questions are worth asking" is also very important. You see that in grant applications, when people develop their research programs, in faculty hiring decisions...

What you're criticizing isn't STEM, but it could be bad STEM.

Ironically the remedy for that, and for scientists who are poor at statistics as Belen mentions, is...more STEM.