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AI Can Now Help Write Wikipedia Pages For Overlooked Scientists (popsci.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the deserved-recognition dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Popular Science: Plenty of prominent scientists have Wikipedia pages. But while checking to see if someone specific has a Wikipedia page is a quick Google search away, figuring out who should be on Wikipedia but isn't -- and then writing an entry for him or her -- is much trickier. For example, you may or may not have heard of Christina Economos. She doesn't have a Wikipedia page about her, although she's a professor at Tufts University and the New Balance Chair in childhood nutrition. But while she lacks a Wikipedia page, she does have a very short stub describing who she is professionally on a website made by a company called Primer. That little blurb, which could one day grow into a full-blown Wiki entry, was created by an AI system dubbed Quicksilver. The idea behind the project is to use AI as a jumping off point. Humans can use it to help them write Wikipedia pages for scientists who don't have them, but deserve to. For example, on Economos' Primer page, there's a link to an article from CBS Boston that mentions her -- a good potential source for a human Wikipedia editor who may want to write an entry for her.

Primer launched officially last year and uses AI to read information and generate reports; part of its focus is doing the kind of work an intelligence analyst might do. Artificial intelligence generally needs data to learn from, and so for this project, Primer used around 30,000 existing scientist Wikipedia pages to train their machine learning systems. Then they fed 200,000 names and related employment information into their AI system. Those names came from the listed authors of scientific papers focused on computer science and biomedical research provided to Primer from the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence. If you're curious to see a sample, you can head on over to this page, which has 100 examples of AI-generated Wikipedia blurbs.

97 comments

  1. Re: Welcome to the circlejerk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    But the AI have passion for their work...thAI have a purpose!!!! Dammit... they deal with people, who in turn treat them like some dusty computer cloud. Colosus forever!!! Wait...Trump won so Guardian forever!!!

  2. How sad by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Little known scientists need an AI to write a Wikipedia entry about them. Yet there are plenty of humans interested in creating Wikipedia pages about any minor sports personality in all languages. Here for instance, I searched an obcure Belgian soccer player in the Finnish version of Wikipedia and found it.

    Sport is clearly more important than science it would seem...

    --
    "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
    1. Re:How sad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ZACHARY VAUGHAN !!! simpsons truly ahead of its time ...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XcHI-enisI

    2. Re:How sad by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 1

      This just in...little known people are little known. But don't let that get in the way of a good sports bashing on Slashdot. You'll be modded up to +5 in no time.

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    3. Re:How sad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      While I agree with you that sports get more media coverage than science, that player
      - "holds the all-time record of 40 goals scored for the Belgian national team"
      - "scored two goals as Belgium defeated Croatia 2–1 to secure a place in the World Cup finals"
      - "was named by The Guardian as one of the ten most promising young players in Europe"

      So while I am not interested in sports, I would assume that he deserves a page in the Internet also.

    4. Re:How sad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah you're a real sportsman pfft. You and Don Jr. should fuck in prison in full camo.

    5. Re:How sad by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

      Sport is clearly more important than science it would seem...

      No, not more important, just more popular. But the solution is more articles about scientists, not fewer about sports. It is not a paper encyclopedia, and there is no inherent limit to the number of articles.

    6. Re:How sad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      To be fair, Romelo Lukaku is not obscure at all and is one of the best players the Belgian team has ever had. He was often seen as one of Europe's ten best players.
      In Europe, soccer is big.

    7. Re: How sad by alvinrod · · Score: 1

      This is hardly unique to sports. Wikipedia (or other specialized wikis) exist for obscure anime, video games, and various other things that are kind of useless, but often have large fan bases without anything better to do.

      People just are not as interested in obscure researchers who may not have done any ground-breaking work or have an extensive career behind them.

      This just seems pointless and will probably end up with outdated information (since no one cares to make the page to start with) and will likely get vandalized by mischievous students. Then lazy journalists will print these as fact and then Wikipedia has a citation for the bogus fact.

    8. Re:How sad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, the entire discussion is about using Wikipedia as a Facebook for people with more ego than the average rock star.

      When you look up scientists in a dictionary you will find the names of the people who changed what we teach in high school, fundamental thing about how the world works.
      This bloke wants an AI to add Wikipedia entries because being listed between Euler and Newton strokes their ego.

    9. Re: How sad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Who?

    10. Re: How sad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He's a famous Belgian? Are you sure he's real?

    11. Re: How sad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thermodynamics begs to differ on there not being a limit. It is that science stuff again.

    12. Re: How sad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Isn't that like saying the USA's best cricketer or Scotland's best baseball player?

    13. Re:How sad by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      Sport is clearly more important than science it would seem...

      No, not more important, just more popular. But the solution is more articles about scientists, not fewer about sports. It is not a paper encyclopedia, and there is no inherent limit to the number of articles.

      Going to the PopSci article, this is apparently a gender issue - which brings up some other issues.

      I haven't yet seen mention any mention whether or not the woman has given consent to someone or something writing a Wikipedia article about her. I can see some real trouble brewing there.

      What if she doesn't want a Wikipedia page? What if she disagrees with the Wikipedia article?

      Aside from the article's intent to focus on women, its obvious the same issues can apply to men.

      I dunno, a sexist Ai bot writing Wiki pages about women scientists and researchers. That gets cringeworthy real quickly. First problem, is the sex of anyone editing the Wiki article going to be weighted or whole disallowed? I digress though, so let's get away from hoo-hoos or peens.

      Regardless my original question still holds. Does Professor Economos want an article? She could easily have a grad student write one if she's focused on her work. Maybe she doesn't want to be there

      The AI articles might contain mistakes, irrelevancies, or just stuff she or her department or dean don't want out there. What I've seen of AI doesn't impress me much.

      So this whole idea of some bot writing Wiki articles about people who don't have any is just forcing these people onto Wikipedia to edit the mistakes the AI makes.

      So we need to see what she wants before forcing her into the world of wiki editing.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    14. Re: How sad by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 1

      Yes, some sport personalities are more noteworthy than some obscure scientists. So what?

    15. Re: How sad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Did Marie Curie give consent for her page?

    16. Re: How sad by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 2

      This just seems pointless and will probably end up with outdated information (since no one cares to make the page to start with) and will likely get vandalized by mischievous students.

      After reading the article,it is a political thing. The point is to "increase the representation of women scientists on Wikipedia".

      But seriously, this is all being done without consent, so starts off on shaky ground.

      Is the AI article writer sufficiently non-male biased?

      Should the AI article writer be precluded from writing about males?

      Transgender scientists?

      What about names that are not easily assigned to a sex - we don't want to assume gender.

      Silly? You betchya. But if you introduce gender identity politics into science, you will get Gender identity politics demanding control of the science.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    17. Re:How sad by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

      Um, Lukaku is hardly obscure. He is one of the top 20 currently playing soccer players. In terms of sports he is 100x more famous than any baseball player or American football player.

    18. Re:How sad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      One of those two people markets themselves and desires popularity.

      Guess what, if you put the money where your mouth is, you often get what you desire.

    19. Re:How sad by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      Subjects generally don't get a say in if there is a Wikipedia article about them. There are stricter rules for biographies of living persons, but the existence of an article is governed by the rules on notability rather than the desires of the subject.

      Otherwise people whose articles say unflattering things about them, particularly politicians, would get them removed.

      Also, if someone were to ask someone else to write an article about them, that would contravene the rules too.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    20. Re: How sad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Never heard of the guy. I've heard of some baseball and American 'football' players. I'm British. Maybe I've had heard of him if I was Belgian.

    21. Re: How sad by epine · · Score: 1

      ... exist for obscure anime, video games, and various other things that are kind of useless, but often have large fan bases without anything better to do.

      Your argument practically writes itself:

      Wikipedia lacks articles about important subjects because Wikipedia itself isn't important enough to have them (contributions accruing only from editors "without anything better to do").

      This is the most juvenile behaviour known to the human species: pointing to something you find unimportant and screeching "why is that in there, when huge amount of work no-one apparently wants to do isn't in there?" or "why does she get to do it (presumably your sister), when I don't?" WAAAAAAA.

      Wikipedia is a volunteer culture, each to their own. It's a bad idea to encourage someone who lives and breathes Power Rangers to contribute to any article concerning planet earth. People on planet earth need to write about planet earth, and those articles will accumulate at a pace dictated by the willingness of those people to contribute their time and expertise (modulo the many momentous distractions of self-importance ...)

      Here's another effect: low-importance articles are much easier to write and contribute. BLP is a comparative war zone. Anthology of international border disputes is Hamburger Hill (largely the exclusive domain of Seal Team Six wannabees).

      But, but, but—you blubber—the mouth-breathers are terraforming planet Power Ranger at an ungodly speed!

      News flash: space is large. Their petty enthusiasms aren't harming anyone else (not very much). And perhaps some of them later grow a life, and become important contributors to important things. I wouldn't be quick to shut down our sandbox half-way houses. Unintended consequences, right?

      Bottom line: if you weren't going out of your way to snoop in your older sister's bedroom, none of these shocking parental inequities would have become an issue, in the first place.

    22. Re: How sad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not even necessary to read the whole article to come to that conclusion. After I read blah who should be (vulgo deserves here comes the white knighting) on Wikipedia it was a dead giveaway that this smells of politics of identity politics to be precise. Wah wah women deserve to be treated equally. Women are as good wah wah. Excuse me but who wants to research the ratio of male to female scientists that are active at the moment. Or overall. Ok is guess that gets hard to find out but I bet the ratio is similar to the ratio of male to female scientists listed on Wikipedia.

    23. Re: How sad by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      Did Marie Curie give consent for her page?

      She dead.

      Anyhow - here is some sit down truth for you.

      Marie Curie is famous not because the is a female. She is famous for what she accomplished. Until the present day, that is

      Do you understand the difference? This AI bot that writes Wiki articles is stated to give women more exposure. It isn't necessarily because they are doing world class work, it is because of their sex.

      Marie Curie said "I'm gonna find out what the ray emitting substance is in pitchblende - hold my Beer!"

      And she collected 2 well deserved frickin' Nobel Prizes for her efforts. She's one of the most incredible scientists ever put on the earth. But today, with pop culturalization as the zenith to aspire to, and the ascendency of gender identity politics, she is more attributed with being a woman than a scientific gift from the cosmos.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    24. Re:How sad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The AI approach has nothing to do with science, per se. It's a targeted data gathering and publication too, a pure spam bot. Fraudulent scientists and those who write no useful papers need this kind of spambot to enhance their visibility.

      Expect the primary clients to be "gender studies" and "noni juice" experts.

    25. Re: How sad by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      Not even necessary to read the whole article to come to that conclusion. After I read blah who should be (vulgo deserves here comes the white knighting) on Wikipedia it was a dead giveaway that this smells of politics of identity politics to be precise. Wah wah women deserve to be treated equally. Women are as good wah wah. Excuse me but who wants to research the ratio of male to female scientists that are active at the moment. Or overall. Ok is guess that gets hard to find out but I bet the ratio is similar to the ratio of male to female scientists listed on Wikipedia.

      The female scientists and engineers I worked with hated the identity politics terribly. Getting trotted out for talks when visitors came through because it was suppposed to promote women. As one said to me. "I wanted to be an engineer, and I've become a nerd fashion model."

      I think that so many identity politics people don't understand that women who become scientists can't stand being looked at a sex objects by the feminists. And yes, if a woman is looked at as a woman before being looked at as a scientist or engineer, the people who are insisting on that are indeed looking at her as a sex object.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    26. Re: How sad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Poor example, as in 1903 Mrs. Curie was originally NOT going to be awarded the prize as she was a woman.

      And what about Rosalind Franklin?

    27. Re: How sad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Jocelyn Bell.. Also no Nobel.

    28. Re: How sad by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      Poor example, as in 1903 Mrs. Curie was originally NOT going to be awarded the prize as she was a woman.

      And what about Rosalind Franklin?

      Rosalind Franklin - she did not receive a Nobel Prize for a very good reason. She was dead.

      In 1958, when she died, DNA structure was not yet proven. After a few more years, in 1962, the Nobel was awarded to Crick, Watson and Wilkins for their body of work on nucleic acid.

      Crick had even suggested that Franklin be awarded a Nobel in Chemistry. However, Nobel rules prohibit posthumous awards.

      So the good doctor Franklin has been awarded many other honors for her work, including a University bearing her name.

      And the sad thing is that this researcher has been elevated to Joan of Arc persecution status by angry feminists who are foaming at the mouth because she didn't get one prize that she was not eligible for because of being dead.

      And that's the pity of it all. If y'all have a problem with the Nobel Prize rules, talk to them.

      Next?

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    29. Re: How sad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The rule preventing posthumous awards was introduced in 1974. Crick et al received the prize in 1962. What was your point again?

    30. Re:How sad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "What if she doesn't want a Wikipedia page?"

      If you are famous enough, you get a Wikipedia page like it or not. There certainly are people who wish they didn't have one.

      If you are not very famous and complain, you can get your page deleted.

      I know at least one case where this happened.

      I have also written pages for 3 people (who did not ask me, but I asked them) and maintain one.

      Which is why posting anon.

    31. Re: How sad by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      The rule preventing posthumous awards was introduced in 1974. Crick et al received the prize in 1962. What was your point again?

      Doen't matter. Of the 923 Awardees, there are only 2 Awards given out after they were dead. They hate giving awards to dead people. They just made it official.

      And apparently you missed everything else > Why don't you read and refute that? I'll wait.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    32. Re:How sad by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      "What if she doesn't want a Wikipedia page?"

      If you are famous enough, you get a Wikipedia page like it or not. There certainly are people who wish they didn't have one.

      If you are not very famous and complain, you can get your page deleted.

      No argument there.

      I have also written pages for 3 people (who did not ask me, but I asked them) and maintain one.

      Which is why posting anon.

      Oooh! could you write an Ol Olsoc page?

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    33. Re: How sad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Three, not two (you forgot the one in 2011). Would it have ended the world if had been increased to four?

      By the way, you were still wrong about the posthumous rule and Franklin.

    34. Re: How sad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In terms of refutation, you say feminists are angry about the one prize she was not eligible for. I just pointed out that she WAS eligible, so I feel that I've refuted that point. Feminists have reasonable cause to feel aggrieved. But then anyone interested in science or who believes in a meritocracy should also feel aggrieved. Points should make prizes, not penises, unless you can show me that you have to use your penis to hold a test tube over a bunsen burner.

    35. Re: How sad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Gender identity politics was very much present in science in the past, and led to a failure to recognise female scientists. The horse has bolted the stable, and has probably led a full life and gone to the knacker's yard by now. Thankfully there is now less discrimination.

    36. Re: How sad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Providing information on scientists isn't the equivalent of Facebook. If you were researching the development of particle physics in the 1950s and 60s, and you could find a Wikipedia article on Feynman but not Gell-Mann, then you'd have a potentially distorted view of the development. Having more articles on scientists is useful. Obviously in this case there will be both articles, but I went through Wikipedia to find someone not represented it would probably result in the response 'Who?', which is the response I'd had over a Belgian soccer player. In fact I didn't even realise Belgians played the game.

      q_e_t

    37. Re: How sad by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      . Feminists have reasonable cause to feel aggrieved. But then anyone interested in science or who believes in a meritocracy should also feel aggrieved. Points should make prizes, not penises, unless you can show me that you have to use your penis to hold a test tube over a bunsen burner.

      Well now - you are a pretty disgusting sexist there, Well considered that you post as an AC.

      I am pretty certain that the only cure you would accept is for a special division of Nobel prizes exclusively for women.

      At that point, your utter fixation on the specific genitalia a person is wielding might be assuaged.

      After that we can consider Nobel prizes only for gay people, trans people (would male to female and female to male be the rule, or would one encompassing group be okay?)

      A meritocracy based on what is between people's legs, and how they mentally define who they want to have sex with. In the race to eliminate sexism, y'all have become more focused on sex than your enemies. You have become your enemy.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    38. Re: How sad by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      Gender identity politics was very much present in science in the past, and led to a failure to recognise female scientists.

      Of that, there is no doubt. But eventually, we have to move on. the best way to eliminate 'isms is to do good work.

      The horse has bolted the stable, and has probably led a full life and gone to the knacker's yard by now. Thankfully there is now less discrimination.

      The problem with activist groups is that they tend to want to remain activist. After achieving their goals, they tend to overreach, or move the goalposts. Mothers against Drunk Driving is an example. After quite a bit of success in getting legislation passed, they continued, to the point of a BAC that isn't drunk is considered DUI. Around here, after the new laws were passed, MADD started sporting "Impairment Starts With the First Drink" stickers.

      They had become prohibitionists rather than say "We did it!" and folded the tents.

      We are seeing the overreach occurring in third wave feminism, which has abandoned the concept of the strong capable female, and substituted the idea of the weak but superior woman, the woman who can command the world, yet who can be terribly damaged if a man winks at her. The woman who needs to give consent for a man to speak to her. This is like some mutated Victorian ethos.

      I wouldn't be opposed to the good professor getting a Nobel Prize. But the whining about it and attributing it to those evil misogynistic men is just part of the overreach.

      I do know the female Engineers and scientists I worked with and were friends with actually molded my opinions on this. To a person, they loathed modern feminism. My own views are still more liberal than theirs. Also to a person, they said that they got more pushback and abuse from other women. My spouse who isn't an engineer, but a suit, concurs.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  3. Re: Welcome to the circlejerk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Who is Al, and why is Beau's summary referring to a guy without a surname?

  4. Overlooked sysadmins by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm starting an AI project to write Wikipedia pages for me and all other overlooked sysadmins.

    1. Re: Overlooked sysadmins by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It just redirects to Asperger.

    2. Re: Overlooked sysadmins by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's a step up from /dev/null.

  5. When did wikipedia become a place to post resumes? by Fly+Swatter · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I thought it was supposed to be like an encyclopedia, not facebook and linked-in.

  6. AI puts Russian Trolls out of work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This will make the unemployment rate in St. Petersburg and Moscow go up 3000%! Brace for the onrush of more timely and more diverse rants that are still unrelated to any substantive discussion or the article contents!

  7. Re:When did wikipedia become a place to post resum by dgatwood · · Score: 1

    This. I predict a week later, these will get auto-deleted by a bot for being insufficiently noteworthy. And thus will begin the first AI-powered edit war.

    --

    Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

  8. Way to lower Wikipedia's quality by guacamole · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Now AI is going to trash Wikipedia with useless stub articles based on information you can google within 10 seconds That's just what we need.

    1. Re:Way to lower Wikipedia's quality by The+Original+CDR · · Score: 1

      Wikipedia will need more than one AI to peer review each other's pages and make the pages authoritative in the underwear sniffing department.

  9. Can vs Should by dohzer · · Score: 1

    Sure they can, but should we let them?

  10. Who "should" be on Wikipedia? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's hard to argue about who deserves a page or not without defining the criteria of deservation.
    How big of a discovery should someone be required to make?
    How widely accepted should the finding be in the scientific community?
    Should unpopular scientists/studies also be included in order to "teach the controversy"?
    Should Wikipedia even be the entity that referees the significance of scientists/results?
    It seems to me that these questions would more suitably be answered in the academic arena.
    Maybe the granting of a Wikipedia page could be a form of award for scientific contribution.

  11. automating what shouldn't be by doom · · Score: 2

    I'm not a huge fan of Jimmie Wales, but one thing he said made a lot of sense to me-- he commented that at wikipedia they're continually at war with programmers who want to automate things that are better done by a human being... e.g. it's easy enough to send a standard welcome message to every newbie, but because it's a standard message it doesn't mean very much, and it's better to have a culture where actual human beings decide to send out welcome messages...

    Automatically generating pages for subjects that a human being couldn't be bothered with sounds like an idea that is perhaps not quite as dumb as letting people vote by cellphoe, but it's getting there.

    1. Re:automating what shouldn't be by bluegutang · · Score: 4, Interesting

      For some things, automatic pages are appropriate.

      There is a guy who has "written" 2.7 million Wikipedia pages. For example, he created a page for every single bird species where the pages don't already exist. That's OK because the basic information for each species is pretty formulaic - English name, Latin name, classification, habitat perhaps. Once the page exists, humans can add more "interesting" info if they have any.

      This method doesn't work well for other topics, like people.

    2. Re:automating what shouldn't be by Kjella · · Score: 1

      This method doesn't work well for other topics, like people.

      Well it works for some people, for example if you say that everyone who's won an Olympic medal is a notable athlete, everyone who's won an Oscar is a notable actor, everyone that's won a Nobel prize is a notable... something, everyone in Congress is a notable politician and so on. Of course you're just then moving the discussion from the individuals to the qualifying criteria, because there's a lot of crappy competitions and awards and prizes and local politics where you're at most notable to a very limited crowd.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  12. What a terrible idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    When you don't have a Wikipedia page, people don't know you're nobody. When you have a Wikipedia page that was clearly put together by a bot (full of meaningless facts that no human would ever find interesting), people will know that you're nobody. In fact all the pages that this bot generates should be put in the category "21st century nobodies," and then deleted.

  13. Self-promotion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Most scientists in the news are in there becacause they called a journalist to promote themselves.

    A much better and easier way to do this would be to take keywords for each research field, and take the top 10 most cited scientists in that field.

    1. Re:Self-promotion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nah, it would be extremely sexist. You forgot to add a filter to make everything 50/50.

  14. If a Wikipedia page pops up in the forest... by MDMurphy · · Score: 1

    ..is it visible?

    So this AI bot creates a Wikipedia page ( barely a snippet from what I saw ) from already accessible information. Is there going to be another bot trolling Wikipedia to find pages to link to this page? How will it fold the link in context? Because if no other Wikipedia page links to it people won't find it within Wikipedia without explicitly searching for it. And since no pages link to it, and it contains the same content as the easily discoverable original page it's going to be low ranked and redundant.

    Maybe, just maybe, it might be worth it if the bot could crawl Wikipedia and find the red links to people that are already mentioned in other pages but have no page of their own. At least those people are already on Wikipedia after a fashion and there will be at least one link to the new bot-created page.

    Tiny pages with no incoming links have little to no value. The bot might be able to compose a tiny page, but so could any person in minutes after assessing if the page will have value. We need to asses for value first, create the page after.

  15. It Serves Feminism, not Science or Wikipedia by Kunedog · · Score: 4, Interesting
    From TFA:

    Another aspect of the project is to make it easier for scientists who are women to get the representation they deserve on Wikipedia—to empower human editors “to close the gender gap in representation of women in science,” Bohannon says. One of the ways that can happen is if a group wants to create more Wikipedia pages with a focus on women scientists, they could use data from Quicksilver, which Bohannon points out is filternable by gender.

    This is yet another sexist politically-motivated project, not one that genuinely cares about scientific merit or improving Wikipedia.

    1. Re:It Serves Feminism, not Science or Wikipedia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Equality, like feminism, has two modern meanings. The polite one when anyone asks what the definition is, and what is practiced. Both now seek a future where women, regardless of merit, are treated better than men in every context.

      None of these efforts end even when women do better. There's still thousands of women-only scholarships and tens of thousands of programs to get more women to go to college and give them support when they are there despite being the majority of students and graduates by a large and increasing margin. Not one feminist or person for equality lifts a finger "to close [that] gender gap."

      It's all pathetic, evil, doublespeak.

    2. Re:It Serves Feminism, not Science or Wikipedia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just as well almost every government and almost every business board has significant numbers of women in senior positions, otherwise your post would come across as a blinkered, mysogynistic rant!

      Oh, wait...

    3. Re:It Serves Feminism, not Science or Wikipedia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      NEWS AT ELEVEN! Men dominate manly positions like maintaining sewages, clearing pipes, carpentry and, wait for it, leadership position requiring dominant, alpha-male type characters.

    4. Re: It Serves Feminism, not Science or Wikipedia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What if the chances of a little known male scientist having a page is 1%, and for a female scientist of the same contribution, 0.5%. Is it sexist to equalise that to 1% (still almost certainly not on Wikipedia)? Or is it sexism in action if female scientists are under-represented?

    5. Re:It Serves Feminism, not Science or Wikipedia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How do you get from an aspect of the project being something you don't like to "[the project is] not one that genuinely cares about scientific merit or improving Wikipedia?"

      As stated in the very quote you provided, creating Wikipedia pages for women scientists is something that people *could* use this tool to do. Therefore, the project has no credibility?

    6. Re:It Serves Feminism, not Science or Wikipedia by AmiMoJo · · Score: 0

      Someone creates an AI system that writes Wikipedia articles about people, regardless of gender.

      They note that one potential use would be for groups interested in getting more notable women from the sciences on to Wikipedia to use these articles are the basis for one. One of the issues with Wikipedia is the lack of contributors, especially to less well known people's articles.

      Somehow in your mind this makes the whole thing sexist and politically motivated. Most people would see it as an attempt to help improve Wikipedia, to get better coverage of an under-represented class of noteworthy scientists. But for you, it's just a bad-faith effort by misandrists or something.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    7. Re:It Serves Feminism, not Science or Wikipedia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Someone creates an AI system that writes Wikipedia articles about people, regardless of gender.

      Incorrect. GP even quoted the article. You should read it. I'll quote it again for your benefit.

      Another aspect of the project is to make it easier for scientists who are women to get the representation they deserve on Wikipediaâ"to empower human editors âoeto close the gender gap in representation of women in science,â Bohannon says.

      Citing a political goal (helping women) as "another aspect of the project" makes it pretty clear that the political ideology is a strong driving force aka motive behind the project, not just a mere example of a potential use as you spin it.

      Here's an easy way to test: would you equally tolerate this behavior if the other side did the same thing? Say, instead of scientists, the other side started a project that tries to get sci-fi writers acknowledged, with no specifed gender... oh but "an aspect to the project" is to get (conservative) white men their "deserved" attention.

      You know, like the whole Sad Puppies/Rabid Puppies thing a couple years back?

      Well, Sad Puppies weren't as explicit about nominating conservative white men as "an aspect" of their project, but that didn't stop their critics screaming that it was, and doing so makes the puppies misogynists or something.

      What goes around comes around.

    8. Re:It Serves Feminism, not Science or Wikipedia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Men disproportionately are competitive, aggressive, and are willing to forego children, family, vacations, and their own health for career success. You want women to be in more positions of power? Convince them that dying ten years earlier, working 80 hours a week, never retiring, never have a non-working vacation, never having children, and never marrying someone that is of equal or greater social status is worth it.

      There's plenty of evidence that women who make those sacrifices actually do quite well and are paid 17% more than their male peers. Sacrificing what makes life worth living is what it takes to earn "senior positions" and men are far more likely to choose that path.

      What is truly misogynist is to claim that women need help to compete against men, when men spend most of their time dragging each other down.

    9. Re: It Serves Feminism, not Science or Wikipedia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Leadership positions do not require alpha males. In fact, for many organisations I suspect alpha males are damaging.

    10. Re:It Serves Feminism, not Science or Wikipedia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

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  16. More importantly... by bluegutang · · Score: 1

    Can AI delete Wikipedia pages for non-notable scientists who write themselves a page in order to promote themselves?

    1. Re:More importantly... by Daralantan · · Score: 1

      A few years ago I used to know a guy in college who was part of the RC Patrol on Wikipedia. He often would show me hilarious and dumb vandalism/trolling on Wikipedia articles.

      One thing I always remember about it though is that they frequently had articles for various Indian guys who were just... office workers.? Maybe some minor programmers, but none of them had any kind of notable achievements. These articles put up daily about these guys whose names showed up pretty much nowhere on the Internet.

  17. Just for scientists? by dromgodis · · Score: 1

    Why would this method be limited to scientists? Couldn't it be asked to write up a bio of anyone?

    1. Re:Just for scientists? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It was specifically trained to pull bio information out of research papers and most likely uses citation count or the text of articles that cite the author's work in order to determine the most influential topics written by the author.

  18. I met many prominent scientists in my life... by LordHighExecutioner · · Score: 1

    ...and they are probably very happy of not having a wikipedia page. They are better known in their field thanks to the work they did, the students they taught, and the papers they published on international journals. Si monumentum requiris, circumspice

  19. Privacy? by petes_PoV · · Score: 2

    Then they fed 200,000 names and related employment information into their AI system.

    Before doing this, I sincerely hope Primer got written permission from those "overlooked" scientists.

    One reason for not having a Wiki page is because they don't actually want one. Not everybody is a self-promoting narcissist.

    --
    politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
    1. Re:Privacy? by Kazoo+the+Clown · · Score: 1

      If it happens to me, I'm changing my name to "F***K Wikipedia"...

    2. Re:Privacy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But Wikipedia isn't doing this. Why are you mad at them?

  20. Cebauno Wikipedia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is an example of when AI is left to go out of control.

  21. Will be banned from Wikipedia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There's a novelty requirement on Wikipedia. If nobody but an AI bot cares, it's spam.

  22. EPIC !! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    > ... AI-generated Wikipedia blurbs ...

    I find this development a little too rich

    Wikipedia allows AIs to edit pages but disallow HUMANS to post truth??

    https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/08/07/wikipedia-editors-protect-new-york-times-bigot-sarah-jeongs-anti-white-racism/

  23. Re:When did wikipedia become a place to post resum by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I thought it was supposed to be like an encyclopedia, not facebook and linked-in.

    Well if little known athletes/actors/etc can have their whole life/resumes documented there, why not also scientists?

    What makes those people more worthy to be on Wikipedia than scientists?

  24. AI all the things by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    why not? Certain news articles are written by AI, school papers can be written by AI, AI can make calls and appointments for you, Poems and short stories can be written by AI, movie script/screenplay can be created by an AI, etc.

    it's not as if wikipedia is not allowing any edits afterwards.

  25. Ah by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 1

    So the "problem" is that a woman professor somewhere didn't already have a Wikipedia article about her. Oy.

    1. Re:Ah by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      go to hell you fucking retard

  26. Loose definition by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Stringing together sentences strings and pasting them, as millennials did with their homework, is not 'writing'. Silicon Valley's conception of what constitutes 'intelligence', let alone the faculties and abilities it engenders, are hysterical.

  27. Re:When did wikipedia become a place to post resum by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    BEGIN
              COPY LinkedIn >> Wikipedia
              GOTO END
    END

    (My thoughts exactly)

  28. How do you define 'deserves'. by fish_in_the_c · · Score: 1

    I kind of thought the idea of a crowd-sourced encyclopedia was that the community decided which topics were important ( aka deserved) to be covered and then wrote about them.

    So ok the AI can write a bio, but does a person decide who 'deserves' one? If you don't know anything about them how would you decide that? If you know something about them , why not write that?

    --
    âoeTolerance applies only to persons, but never to truth. Intolerance applies only to truth, but never to persons.
  29. Needs work but very cool by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    "Auriel A Willette is affiliated with Iowa State University.[1]He specializes in food science and human nutrition.[2]He is a member of Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition.[1]

    Willette’s work focused on an area of the brain — the medial temporal lobe and specifically the hippocampus — that is critical for learning new things and sending information to long-term memory.[3]She and Webb analyzed anxiety and motor function using the Unified Parkinson Disease Rating Scale – a tool that measures progression of the disease."
    >He specializes in food science and...
    >She and Webb analyzed anxiety and...
    are they male or female??

    "Adam Boyko, Ph.D., is a dog geneticist at Cornell University who created Embark, sort of the Cadillac of doggy DNA tests.[4]He served as a Research Associate in the Genetics Department at the Stanford School of Medicine before beginning his faculty appointment at Cornell in 2011."
    >Embark, sort of the Cadillac of doggy DNA tests
    improper language, but i guess useful enough for a human to use when writing a wikipedia article

    "“Early detection is key,” Grammer wrote on Instagram, captioning a photo of herself at Cedars-Sinai hospital smiling next to her “amazing” surgeon Dr. Beth Karlan. I just feel my responsibility as a cancer survivor to go out there and let people know what the symptoms are for ."
    missing quotations for the last bit of what they said

    I would like AI to one day read books or produce summaries/shortened versions of text using a similar system

  30. sibling-envy boo birds by epine · · Score: 1

    Belated subject line to my previous post: sibling-envy boo birds.

  31. Re:When did wikipedia become a place to post resum by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Someone wants to create and maintain the articles about little known athletes/actors/etc. That's it; stop assigning undue weight to Wikipedia articles, they have no bearing whatsoever on a subject's importance.

  32. What if... by Kazoo+the+Clown · · Score: 1

    What if a scientist DOESN'T WANT a Wikipedia entry? Who do they sue to keep their name out of such things?

  33. notability guidelines by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Many of these "overlooked" scientists don't have pages on Wikipedia simply because they are not notable enough. Wikipedia isn't linkedin. Nor should it be.

  34. she does have a very short stub by ItsJustAPseudonym · · Score: 1

    Hey, hey, hey! That's a bit harsh, don't you think?

  35. New Balance Chair? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "She doesn't have a Wikipedia page about her, although she's a professor at Tufts University and the New Balance Chair in childhood nutrition."

    Why "although"? Is there an article for every professor at Tufts University? Is "New Balance Chair" a new Nobel Prize? Is there any particular reason there should be Wikipedia page except for her gender?