Early AI labs barred managers from paper authorship
Early AI lab leadership maintained explicit rules preventing managers and team leads from appearing on papers without material contributions. These standards persisted after the key figure who established them departed. In AI organizations where social influence and compute resources shape progress, credit is frequently assigned afterward to prominent figures through authorship, scaling access, and public visibility, even when direct involvement in the work remains limited.
@suchenzang Early Samy's brain was amazing because managers and team leads would explicitly NOT go on papers if they didn't materially contribute. This left a strong impression on me. Done of us fought hard to keep this culture alive for long after he left, but then eventually times changed.
Susan Zhang@suchenzangin a (social/compute)-capital intensive game, there's a funny dynamic that happens where "politically-influential" figures in an org are bribed with credit attribution after the fact (authorship on paper, public viz on podcasts/blogs, etc) in order for a "breakthrough" to land/be released/be published/be given compute resources for scaling up of course these figures became influential back in the day for some other reason, and can in theory be competent themselves as well but at this point they generally have nothing to do with the successes/failures they talk about, which gets exponentially worse the longer their tenure becomes maybe this is just how the way the world works with a rich-get-richer fame effect (after all, they can still attract new fresh talent who believe their public image hook, line, and sinker) but i sometimes wonder if an entire economy / tech-bubble ends up being built on stolen valor* what the long-term consequences may be (maybe nothing!) ----- *those not built on stolen valor have the other hairy problem of creative financial and legal engineering that is way beyond my ability to speculate on
@suchenzang Yeah I've seen all of these you mention and hate it. Early brain was a pretty magical exception. It was exactly as things should always be.
Susan Zhang@suchenzangwas never the case everywhere i've been at by the time i got there some got credit for "executive support behind the scenes" (might've been too beneath them to contribute any hands-on execution time) some were for publication approval some are so legendary that every accomplishment from thousands of people around them are attributed to their own personal doing (which, relatively speaking, might not be the worst thing) it's pretty much the name of the game to bribe and do whatever you need to do to lube up landing your work in such a capital-intensive field but at some point, maybe it's worth playing a different game with a different set of rules...
#62Susan Zhang@SUCHENZANGin a (social/compute)-capital intensive game, there's a funny dynamic that happens
where "politically-influential" figures in an org are bribed with credit attribution after the fact (authorship on paper, compute resources for scaling up, public viz on podcasts/blogs, etc) in order for a "breakthrough" to land/be released/be published
of course these figures became influential back in the day for some other reason, and can in theory be competent themselves as well
but at this point they generally have nothing to do with the successes/failures they talk about, which gets exponentially worse the longer their tenure becomes
maybe this is just how the way the world works with a rich-get-richer fame effect (after all, they can still attract new fresh talent who believe their public image hook, line, and sinker)
but i sometimes wonder if an entire economy / tech-bubble ends up being built on stolen valor*
what the long-term consequences may be
(maybe nothing!)
-----
*those not built on stolen valor have the other hairy problem of creative financial and legal engineering that is way beyond my ability to speculate on
#62Susan Zhang@SUCHENZANGin a (social/compute)-capital intensive game, there's a funny dynamic that happens
where "politically-influential" figures in an org are bribed with credit attribution after the fact (authorship on paper, public viz on podcasts/blogs, etc) in order for a "breakthrough" to land/be released/be published/be given compute resources for scaling up
of course these figures became influential back in the day for some other reason, and can in theory be competent themselves as well
but at this point they generally have nothing to do with the successes/failures they talk about, which gets exponentially worse the longer their tenure becomes
maybe this is just how the way the world works with a rich-get-richer fame effect (after all, they can still attract new fresh talent who believe their public image hook, line, and sinker)
but i sometimes wonder if an entire economy / tech-bubble ends up being built on stolen valor*
what the long-term consequences may be
(maybe nothing!)
-----
*those not built on stolen valor have the other hairy problem of creative financial and legal engineering that is way beyond my ability to speculate on
was never the case everywhere i've been at by the time i got there
some got credit for "executive support behind the scenes" (might've been too beneath them to contribute any hands-on execution time)
some were for publication approval
some are so legendary that every accomplishment from thousands of people around them are attributed to their own personal doing (which, relatively speaking, might not be the worst thing)
it's pretty much the name of the game to bribe and do whatever you need to do to lube up landing your work in such a capital-intensive field
but at some point, maybe it's worth playing a different game with a different set of rules...
Lucas Beyer (bl16)@giffmana@suchenzang Early Samy's brain was amazing because managers and team leads would explicitly NOT go on papers if they didn't materially contribute. This left a strong impression on me. Done of us fought hard to keep this culture alive for long after he left, but then eventually times changed.
@qberthet @LucaAmb @octonion If I shape – or choose – the research question, design the experiments, help analyze the data, and help write the paper that doesn’t count as deserving authorship in your book?
Quentin Berthet@qberthet@LucaAmb @BlancheMinerva @octonion I personally think that this is too low a bar for authorship.