Post #1655923
2026-04-20 06:22 UTC
I think signalling theory is useful for understanding the effects of LLMs - they don't just *produce work*, they disrupt the indicators that we are used to relying on for judging how much effort someone put into communicating with us.
When someone writes to me now, I cannot as easily judge the level of care they took, their expertise in a domain, or bespoke knowledge about me that they have used to customise their communication
Problematic!
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Replies (2)
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@tomstafford@mastodon.online 2026-04-20 06:28
An obvious application is #ResearchFunding Research Funders increase rising application numbers. Some - maybe not all, but definitely some - of that is due to AI. If so, then we should expect not just increased competition / reduced success rates, and increased funder workload, but ALSO loss of the reliability in the signals reviewers have used to assess quality Direct evidence for this: https://osf.io/preprints/metaarxiv/d8gcu_v1 3/
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@MichaelTBacon@social.coop 2026-04-20 15:34
@tomstafford Very much what Tufekci was getting at here: https://slideslive.com/39055698/are-we-having-the-wrong-nightmares-about-ai