Oh, okay. Thanks!
I think my confusion remains, though. In your first example (which I would also hope for) there is no genAI prose, or at least, no need for it. In your second example (which I would be very sad to see on iNat) there is genAI prose that appears to synthesize disparate comments.
And for what? What is the point of including the generative AI text?
I think itās a practical matter. If you look at my comments on how to identify crab spiders, for instance, youāll see a range of different pieces of information. I do not ever write out a detailed enough comment for it to make sense next to a CV suggestion of a particular species. An LLM could synthesize my many comments, and the comments of many other users, in a succinct way that makes sense in the context of text accompanying the CVās suggestion.
As an analogy, in one comment I describe the leg of the elephant, in another comment I describe the trunk of an elephant, and in another comment another user describes the ears of an elephant, and the genAI prose synthesizes that into a sentence or two for a user to read about how to identify an elephant.
I hope even if this doesnāt bring you into the fold, it helps you understand the other side.
@tiwane just said a lot of what I was going to say, but I spent a lot of time writing this, lol so here goes.
The massive chilling effect this overwhelming negativity might be having on potential supporters of the idea seems like itās exactly why iNaturalist would want to set up a private feedback form.
Doing a site-wide survey gathering thoughts on a potential technical demo seemsā¦ not super useful at this point. And it seems like itās mostly being suggested because of the inclusion of the term genAI. Since we donāt know to what extent generative AI will actually be used, it would essentially be a premature survey about feelings about Google and the term genAI, and not the demo/tool. Because no one knows what that will actually be yet.
Demanding iNat staff explain exactly how this demo (repeat ā demonstration, proof of concept, technical demo ā not a feature that will definitely be implemented and forced upon anyone) is going to work when itās very clear that they donāt know because they havenāt started building it yet doesnāt seem helpful or like it is intended to be much of a discussion. Several folks are all but demanding community approval of iNaturalistās engineering decisions, which is just not how things work anywhere.
I was as frustrated as anyone with the initial non-announcement, which allowed the vitriol and distrust to grow unchecked, and which they have apologized for. But it states pretty clearly in the blog post that the goal is to build a demo and learn more about potential uses and impacts.
Our goal is to build a working demo by the end of the year, and weāll share more updates as the project evolves.
More generally, weāre excited to use this grant to learn more about how AI is changing the technology landscape and how we can leverage these tools to enhance our mission and impact. As we learn about what AI tools are available to our nonprofit and how we might use them, we will continue to weigh ethical and environmental concerns.
The updates in this forum post are literally them sharing more updates as the project evolves, and they are addressing these exact concerns.
Of course the answers havenāt been super satisfying yet, itās still just an idea! And on the other hand, if iNat had waited until December and announced āWe used some Google money to build a demo for suggesting IDs tips that uses genAI, check it out, if you like it maybe weāll use itā it feels like some people would (reasonably) be even angrier.
A tool that is supposed to assist identification should digest any publicly available key, with references.
If it could include taxa treatment as well, that would be even better.
Exactly, itās equally not representative. And while I understand the wish for having a way to give anonymous private feedback (fixed as the form asks for an iNat username), it feels a bit strange that people are told not to analyse the sentiment on this forum or do polls here while being shepherded into another non-transparent but also not representative channel.
Given the lack of communications on this topic beforehand, it does feel like a way to not do any deeper reflection and instead being able to say you ālistenedā without having to change anything. Anonymous ācustomer feedbackā forms is typically where criticism is directed for it to just silently die.
Given how the initial āannouncementā was handled I personally donāt feel put at ease by this method at all and it does very little to reassure or re-build lost trust.
I just want to point out that 318 out of 3 million users on iNaturalist is extremely low turnout. Itās a very interesting poll, but we need to be very careful about stating what the community as a whole thinks. We can only summarize what this sample of the community thinks.
My guess is that the majority outside of this particular thread are in the middle or unsure. Teetering between pessimistic and optimistic. I personally fall on the optimistic side of this issue. Iāve read the comments, I think itās a good goal, I generally trust the staff, and I generally trust the community to work with the staff in a way that creates an amazing new tool to help us teach, learn, and engage with nature. If they create something unhelpful, well, so what. Theyāll learn and do better next time. Iāve heard nothing to suspect that iNaturalist is bound to Google in some nefarious way by the terms of the grant. Until I see evidence that that is indeed the case, I will work on the assumption that this is a good faith effort to improve iNaturalist.
Edit: It was pointed out to me that, though there are over 3 million users, the ~430,000 active users, ~60,000 peak daily users during CNC, or ~12,000 daily identifiers would make better frames of comparison. I agree completely! However, 318/12,000 daily identifiers is still only 2.6%. Compare that with the active user number, itās less than 1%.
Lets not countinue the survey topic, we need a rigorous survey to know the communities true opinion?
While i respect your request, the above seems contradictory in a way.
Perhaps we should request staff create a public poll (not public in the way showing how individual people vote) and send it out to everyone as an announcement like the blog?
okayā¦ if it ends up being a program that directs people to comments iāve made, that could potentially be something i could get behind. If itās a program that attempts to rehash what iāve already said, no, iād just never leave comments again. It doesnāt really matter how good it is at this, i do not like the principle.
And this is where i suppose feelings differ from some others on the issue, and reasoning wonāt do anything. Iām not comfortable asking genAI for ID tips, or as a whole really. If you are, thatās none of my business, but can we keep it separate from inat? can we not be explicitly training it on our users without their consent?
iām having trouble understanding the distinction between the following. would you elaborate?
there is no specific implementation at this time. so are you saying that any talk about what the implementation (theoretically) might or should look like should go in a separate thread?
i guess i donāt mind if some stuff needs to be discussed in a separate thread for some reason, but iām having trouble understanding which stuff that is.
The discussion and controversy of all this is large enough maybe seperate forum posts isnt a bad idea. This is already 391 comments.
I believe what many of us are asking is akin to: what was promised to Google or submitted in the grant proposal so iNat would get the 1.5M? Something had to be proposed beyond āwe want to use genAIā so Google could pick among candidates, no? The blog post and FAQ contradicting itself doesnāt help the confusion.
I want to register my disapproval for all the people presenting a sunk-cost defense of this incorporation of genAI and Google tech into iNaturalist. We are all fully aware that genAI and Google products structure our lives and iNat usage intensely. Saying that such existing use should make us okay with any further use of any further related tool is tendentious and fallacious.
Hey everyone,
I have some very very good news!
@procyonloiter and I just had a 3-hour in-person talk with @loarie and I am delighted to say that it has completely alleviated my concerns around this entire issue. I went into it seriously contemplating deleting my entire account and many years of work, and I have come out of it feeling like a massive weight has been lifted.
This whole thing has just been very poor messaging and some serious miscommunication, and DOES NOT indicate any actual shift in how iNat is planning to operate.
That doesnāt completely cover everything we spoke about, but Iām going to post this now to get it up in the thread- please feel free to ask any questions I might be able to answer!
Awesome, thank you!
I did make the choice to assume staff mean well. āAssume others mean wellā is, after all, what Tony often gently reminds us to do.
Wait so.. the tool isnāt even gonna be a type of GenerativeAI? I wanted to joke about how it could be made as an internal search engine and then labeled as GenerativeAI, but that would have been more of a mischievous suggestion/joke(which I felt would be tonedeaf in such a serious discussion). And honestly, now Iām even more confused, so it was really just used as a buzzword? It would be a very strange choice of wording if the developed feature will be unrelated. The layer of miscommunication seems to have been doubled. If you can, please elaborate a bit on what you meant there.
So we can hope for more good stuff like the Disagreements filter. If you are looking for me ā¦ I will be there
Good news, but I feel like the time I spent reading this stuff the past two days was a big waste of time then and I donāt appreciate that at all.
Unfortunately it turns out that iNat staff, like many of the rest of us, tend to be nature nerds who are happier hanging out in a bog with frogs than interacting with people, and thus the communication skills may be a little ā¦ lacking ā¦ at times.( I say that with total love as a nature nerd who wants to be in a bog right now). There will be some much better communication incoming soon, and if it helps, they definitely all feel terrible over this entire mess and look like they havenāt slept in several days.