MIT asks arXiv to withdraw preprint of paper on AI and scientific discovery

MIT's article is quite scant on details. WSJ has more information, but still no specifics: https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/mit-says-it-no-longer-stands-beh...

> The paper was championed by MIT economists Daron Acemoglu, who won the 2024 economics Nobel, and David Autor. The two said they were approached in January by a computer scientist with experience in materials science who questioned how the technology worked, and how a lab that he wasn’t aware of had experienced gains in innovation. Unable to resolve those concerns, they brought it to the attention of MIT, which began conducting a review.

Nobel _Memorial_ Prize in Economic Sciences

That’s not a Nobel Prize.

To quote someone elsewhere: "Okay, time to pack it up boys! Someone found the cheatcode to defeating economic research."

If that’s the distinction, it would have been helpful for the original comment to note that they were just sharing some silly trivia instead of making a point.

This is inaccurate pedantry. It is commonly referred to as the nobel prize in economics and administered by the same foundation, the funding for it is a gift to the foundation from the Swedish central bank instead of being sourced from Nobel's estate.

It's not a silly piece of trivia, it's a completely different thing than what people think of as the "Nobel Prize", which is the set of prizes established by Nobel's will, not an unrelated prize named after him to leech off the prestige associated with his name.

yeah, but also "Nobel accuses the awarding institution of misusing his family's name, and states that no member of the Nobel family has ever had the intention of establishing a prize in economics." It's hijacking of the brand.

That ship has already sailed… and circumnavigated the globe several times. It’s weird anyone feels obligated to bring this stuff up since everybody familiar with the prize knows the deal.

> Nobel accuses the awarding institution of misusing his family's name

From Alfred Nobel’s great grandnephew (I’m not even sure what that looks like on a family tree), to spare anyone else looking it up.

The reason people correctly view this as silly trivia is that it's hardly an "unrelated prize." The Nobel Foundation administers the Economics prize in the same manner as all the others, and the awards are given at the same ceremony. You are making it sound like it's entirely separate when it's not. I don't think the Nobel Foundation was trying to "leech off the prestige associated with his name."

AFAICT your take exists entirely to delegitimize economics as a science. Very childish and frustrating.

The price was created, and is given, by the Nobel Foundation, which was set up by Nobel's will to carry out his last wish. If you go to the official page of the Nobel Prize the Prize in Economic Sciences is listed with the other Nobel Prizes. Its not one of the original Nobel Prizes, but claiming its a completely different thing is not true.

The grandson of Alfred Nobel's older brother complained publicly 20 years ago... about a prize that's been given now for nearly 60 years.

Yawn.

Distant relation of man who used his fortune making explosives to give a prize to prominent academic unhappy, complains. The foundation got to make the decision, was given the name. This is "old man yells at cloud" level of discourse. This distant relation has less of a right to say how the name gets to be used than the foundation created by the man.

The comment means remember 1974. Cough cough Hayek... cough... Samuelson...

Mostly it is just annoying when people refer to long-existing super niche arguments as if they are making a general statement of some sort.

The way they presented the information, it is a silly bit of trivia. If there wanted to make some sort of argument about prestige or whatever, they could have made it. Dropping hints of some niche rabbit hole issue is not making a good-faith argument.

What are we afraid of summoning Voldemort or something here? Just say whatever you are coughing at, lol.

It's pendantry, he won a prize and the great grand nephew says they shouldn't call it a Nobel prize. It's a waste of time to discuss what the prize should be called rather whether the award is worthy of being the best economics research/breakthrough that year. I don't know the answer to that but I don't really care about the nomenclature

>> It's not a silly piece of trivia, it's a completely different thing than what people think of as the "Nobel Prize", which is the set of prizes established by Nobel's will, not an unrelated prize named after him to leech off the prestige associated with his name.

> AFAICT your take exists entirely to delegitimize economics as a science. Very childish and frustrating.

You know, real sciences don't need shiny medallions to make them legitimate. I'd say your comment delegitimizes economics more than the GP's.

> of being the best economics research/breakthrough that year.

So the idea that it should be a "peace prize" or contribute to the world as a whole is entirely lost in this definition. Which is why I find the Sveriges Riksbank memorial prize so unctuous.

he was a decade early