"Bhautik Joshi posted a paper to arXiv on the topic of some consulting work he did for a short film, and listed the producer and actor as co-authors to garner publicity."
My question was directed at "salem" who stated "No, they actually did write parts of the paper.". That statement seemed like it should have reasoning behind it...
The paper is about how to iteratively tweak your rendering pipeline to achieve a certain look. It makes sense that the director of the movie would be involved in that process.
I did. They describe using a Keras implementation, written by someone else, of style transfer, which was invented by someone else, to achieve a particular artistic effect. They use a pre-trained model. They don't even have to buy any hardware, since they used AWS GPU instances. It's a case study, nothing new has been accomplished here.
Do I also get a Verge writeup if I publish a PDF to arxiv about how I compiled and installed tensorflow? The only reason we're talking about this paper is because the name of a Hollywood actress is on it, and because it has the AI buzzword.
Look at the title: "Kristen Stewart co-authors AI paper". 113 points.
The paper itself was submitted earlier, under its actual title, which does not mention Kristen Stewart: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13443107 6 points! The paper is not very interesting. The only thing that makes it newsworthy is the coauthor.
Actually, she's not an actor in the (short) film in question, she is the director as stated in TFA. The ML technique is applied to achieve a specific effect the director wanted to achieve.
Did she submit PRs to TensorFlow? Probably not. Did she contribute to the paper? Most definitely, I think we can even go so far as to say it's plausible she fulfills the Vancouver criteria:
Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or (..)
AND
Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content;
AND
Final approval of the version to be published;
AND
Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work
Assuming she at some point revised the paper critically for content, which is plausible, there is no denying she's on the author list.
It is plausible that she had some input to the paper beyond requesting the work, and artistic feedback. But it's definitely more likely that she didn't.
Perhaps more charitably, because she has no known history of having done so, and her talents in the acting profession are not generally considered directly transferable.
Would it be safe to say your opinion of Steve Jobs is similar?
It is plausible that Steve Jobs had some input to the iPod beyond requesting the work, and artistic feedback. But it's definitely more likely that he didn't.
The point was that there is no requirement beyond conceiving of the work and intellectual (not just spelling and grammar) feedback for her to be considered a coauthor.
It's not very different from a professor having a idea, giving it to a grad student to implement, run and write the paper, and then the professor gives feedback on the paper before submitting.
Your professor can fully understand your work, could have done it herself if she had the time, and can fully check your work for any flaws or limitations. Your non-technical manager cannot fully understand your work, do it herself or check it.
If "Substantial contributions to the conception ... of the work" is enough to be a co-author, she should be a co-author. But that means that if Pointy-Haired-Boss tells Dilbert to "make the Skype call to Mars less laggy" and Dilbert invents FTL communication, PHB gets to be co-author of the paper (and resulting Nobel prize?). That seems too generous to PHB.
That was my initial reaction, but if you look at section 2, both paragraphs could plausibly have been written by Stewart and/or Shapiro; all the images are authored by Stewart as the director.
If you can write something useful about the results or the things you discovered or developed in the process, sure. (Not in every venue of course, but in many)
I don't know enough about the specific subfields involved here to guess where and if this specific example would likely pass.
Bhautik Joshi, first author on this paper, collaborated with Sébastien Ourselin on e.g. [1], and Sébastien Ourselin has an Erdős number of 5 [2]. So Stewart's Erdős number is at most 7.
Her Bacon number is 2. 'We learned that Kristen Stewart has a Bacon number of two because she and Michael Sheen costarred together in "The Twilight Saga," and Sheen and Bacon starred in "Frost/Nixon."' [3]
I don't think I've ever heard the actor in question express anything interesting—let alone persuasive—about the universe. I'd call this a minimum for contributing to research.
This looks like a blatant publicity stunt, to be even blunter.
She directed the movie, and provided the painting that was used for the "other half" of the style transfer - so was critical to creating both inputs and guiding the final result.
That alone is more involvement than some PhD advisors have in papers they co-authored.
And she may of course delved much further into the technical side of things that what I've described above.
A nonspecialist such as Stewart may or may not have contributed to the paper.
All the evidence we have now is her name on the paper (for which there is obviously a strong propaganda/PR incentive for all authors, so that evidence should be at least partially discounted).
I certainly wouldn't consider this (fairly thin) body of evidence dispositive in an unusual situation such as this.
I'd be more convinced by e.g. a string of commits on the paper's repo coming from her account (if we were confident that her account was really hers).
The parent's skepticism seems to me entirely warranted, given the currently available evidence, and I don't think it should be downvoted.
Look at some of her smaller, more independent role choices. Some smart and interesting choices, very well executed. I don't believe this can be simply ascribed to "handling."
She catches considerable grief for some big, very-well-paid, and "sparkly" roles (thanks, Craig Ferguson). Sometimes, she almost seems to share that attitude herself about them.
But she's also entrenched herself as a very moneyed, A-List actor. I wonder what she may use that for and where she may take it.
Given that most hollywood actors and actresses come from theater in one form or another (especially, at minimum, "theater kid" groups in HS), the latter part of that is debatable.
I mean maybe Disney's High School Musical series gave them a bit of a boost in the aughts but I'm pretty sure Rent-heads will always be at the bottom of the social totem pole.
I don't know where you're from, but where I'm from, the math/computer nerds were a billion times more outcasted than the theater nerds ever were in HS. I've lived all over the country since and found that to consistently be the case.
A request usually implies a question. You didn't ask one. You simply stated you didn't know her. Your post was actually far more condescending as written.
I doubt it would have been that different if the person in question was Robert Pattinson. I think the condescension is more about a "lol as if some dumb actor knows anything about AI".
Women who do not follow the domestic norm are looked down upon in society. Beauvoir is explaining that woman referred as “the other.” She states, “What is a woman?’ […] The fact that I ask it is in itself significant. A man would never get the notion of writing a book on the peculiar situation of the human male. But if I wish to define myself, I must first of all say: ‘I am a woman’; on this truth must be based all further discussion. A man never begins by presenting himself as an individual of a certain sex; it goes without saying that he is a man. […] It would be out of the question to reply: ‘And you think the contrary because you are a man,’ for it is understood that the fact of being a man is no peculiarity.” (34-5) As for man there is no need to define what is to be a man, there is no reason because they identified themselves as the superior part. Man represents both “the positive and the neutral,” which doesn’t need to be explained or defined, and it is self-explanatory. “Thus humanity is male and man defines woman not in relation to herself but as relative to him; she is not regarded as an autonomous being.” (35) Men are the default setting and women are considered a recessive gender. “He is the Subject, he is the Absolute—she is the Other.” (35) It is like an asymmetrical comparison, but masculine and feminine aren’t asymmetrical. De Beauvoir defines women as the “Second sex” because women are defined in relation to men. Aristotle referred that women are “female by virtue of a certain lack of qualities.” De Beauvoir also points out that St. Thomas referred to the woman as the “imperfect man", the "incidental” being.
unification of the symbols from current context with this paragraph are left as an exercise to the reader
I thought it was pretty clear that the surprise and skepticism is around her background as an actress.
If the article mentioned that she had been studying Math/CS/etc. in her private time to get the background needed to contribute to the paper, I'm pretty sure the comments would be pretty different, though her gender wouldn't have changed.
Reminds me of John Urschel: PhD candidate in mathematics (MIT) and offensive lineman for Ravens. Wrote six papers while playing in NFL. https://math.mit.edu/~urschel/
John Urschel is a legit full-time mathematician. Stewart's coauthorship seems to have more to do with her skills as a director than computer scientist.
67 comments
[ 0.19 ms ] story [ 122 ms ] threadhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13443107
Here's the direct link: https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.04928
Leaving them out as co-authors would be misconduct.
I can't help but think it would be degrading to have your name on a paper and it be deemed too advanced to be your responsibility..
You could ask the first author directly, I suppose; https://twitter.com/bhautikj
Do I also get a Verge writeup if I publish a PDF to arxiv about how I compiled and installed tensorflow? The only reason we're talking about this paper is because the name of a Hollywood actress is on it, and because it has the AI buzzword.
Look at the title: "Kristen Stewart co-authors AI paper". 113 points.
The paper itself was submitted earlier, under its actual title, which does not mention Kristen Stewart: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13443107 6 points! The paper is not very interesting. The only thing that makes it newsworthy is the coauthor.
I would ask what is the source of that quote? The article no longer contains it.
Did she submit PRs to TensorFlow? Probably not. Did she contribute to the paper? Most definitely, I think we can even go so far as to say it's plausible she fulfills the Vancouver criteria:
Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or (..)
AND
Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content;
AND
Final approval of the version to be published;
AND
Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work
Assuming she at some point revised the paper critically for content, which is plausible, there is no denying she's on the author list.
Why is it "definitely more likely"?
I guess I'll get downvoted for this too because it sounds anti-women or something, but it is the unfortunate truth.
It is plausible that Steve Jobs had some input to the iPod beyond requesting the work, and artistic feedback. But it's definitely more likely that he didn't.
It's not very different from a professor having a idea, giving it to a grad student to implement, run and write the paper, and then the professor gives feedback on the paper before submitting.
If "Substantial contributions to the conception ... of the work" is enough to be a co-author, she should be a co-author. But that means that if Pointy-Haired-Boss tells Dilbert to "make the Skype call to Mars less laggy" and Dilbert invents FTL communication, PHB gets to be co-author of the paper (and resulting Nobel prize?). That seems too generous to PHB.
There are many computer science papers discussing the usability, implementation, application of tech ologies.
I don't know enough about the specific subfields involved here to guess where and if this specific example would likely pass.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth%E2%80%93Aaron_pair
Bhautik Joshi, first author on this paper, collaborated with Sébastien Ourselin on e.g. [1], and Sébastien Ourselin has an Erdős number of 5 [2]. So Stewart's Erdős number is at most 7.
Her Bacon number is 2. 'We learned that Kristen Stewart has a Bacon number of two because she and Michael Sheen costarred together in "The Twilight Saga," and Sheen and Bacon starred in "Frost/Nixon."' [3]
[1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/220677921_A_quantit...
[2] https://zbmath.org/collaboration-distance/?a=ourselin.sebast...
[3] http://www.mtv.com/news/2442193/bacon-number-google/
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedy_Lamarr
This looks like a blatant publicity stunt, to be even blunter.
That alone is more involvement than some PhD advisors have in papers they co-authored.
And she may of course delved much further into the technical side of things that what I've described above.
It still seems like the authorship is a means to an end of eyeballs. Academia drags its body slowly on....
All the evidence we have now is her name on the paper (for which there is obviously a strong propaganda/PR incentive for all authors, so that evidence should be at least partially discounted).
I certainly wouldn't consider this (fairly thin) body of evidence dispositive in an unusual situation such as this.
I'd be more convinced by e.g. a string of commits on the paper's repo coming from her account (if we were confident that her account was really hers).
The parent's skepticism seems to me entirely warranted, given the currently available evidence, and I don't think it should be downvoted.
She catches considerable grief for some big, very-well-paid, and "sparkly" roles (thanks, Craig Ferguson). Sometimes, she almost seems to share that attitude herself about them.
But she's also entrenched herself as a very moneyed, A-List actor. I wonder what she may use that for and where she may take it.
But have no doubt, it will be (already has?) overblown with headers like "female actress can into AI".
I am sure there are plenty of people whom I consider "conventionally famous" whom you've never heard of. That doesn't make you an idiot.
unification of the symbols from current context with this paragraph are left as an exercise to the reader
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simone_de_Beauvoir#Existential...
I thought it was pretty clear that the surprise and skepticism is around her background as an actress.
If the article mentioned that she had been studying Math/CS/etc. in her private time to get the background needed to contribute to the paper, I'm pretty sure the comments would be pretty different, though her gender wouldn't have changed.