Had a curry and naan with a long-time friend and caught up with her! It's always very interesting to talk with her because she's a scientist and is an expat living in Japan. She supported me go through a difficult time, and I really appreciate it. It's so fortunate that I have her in my life! Her cheerful and dependable character is hard to find.
We talked about AI and science cos she attended a conference the other day. She witnessed a heated debate between two professors, one is anti-AI, and the other anti-humanity. They were discussing which is better, AI-generated writing or human-generated writing. The extent of writing you could prompt ChatGPT to do is crazy now. But the problem is that ChatGPT is very poor in giving you credible refereneces for hypothesis or facts - it'd just give you fake papers and fake references.
A bioscience publisher was there at the panel discussion and said it is developing a tool that helps non-native English speakers to "write" a paper. How? A researcher can just input figures and tables, and the tool will write text to describe and interpret the data in English for them! How accurate would it describe or interpret the results? And how would it write a story within the context of existing literature? I have no idea, but it is kind of concerning because it might discourage researchers to write even more. The skills to compose declined a lot already with the advent of smartphones, google searching, and ChatGPT. It would just aggravate the situation, and humans may become incapable of creating anything on their own..?
Another interesting topic is open access. Open access fees are super high now- 3k or 4k USD is uncommon. In the US, you include publication fees to your grant application. But how does it work in a Japanese univeresity? She heard professors saying they cannot include publications fees to their grant money because grant money should be spent for research, not publication cost. But publishing is an important part of your research, too! I need some in-person interview or information digging to evaluate what is going on with Japan's research. Either way, we are both fortunate to not have to worry about grant money or the high publication fees. Geez.
We also talked about cultural differences in conversations and dialogues. In Western culture, it is the speaker's responsibility to get your point across to your audience, and it's your fault if your audience does not understand you. On the other hand, in Japan, people are expected to read their mind, or play catch in communication, and the audience is expected to ask multiple questions in order to understand the speaker's points.
Communication is not just a cultural thing, but also it's a skill to develop. There are people in Singapore or around the world who fall short of communication skills and do not explain much or just send a picture or a URL without explanation for various reasons - cultural, being lazy, or not seeing the importance of adding extra comments (it may be considered as being lazy also). For me, I have a mental block that makes me over-afraid of being the sole speaker and making the other person annoyed or bored.
Perhaps I have bad experiences of being treated like just a wall, with the other person never ending talking. But I should get over it and be more willing to hone my communication skills, explaining things in detail in a concise way to make myself understood.
Meeting the extrovert guy who talks a lot but not in an overwhelming way motivated me a lot.
She gave me a Christmas gift, too... I'm spoiled. It's very nice of her, and it reminds me of the spirit of giving. So thankful! I'm very fortunate to have her.
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