Taxacom: More on AI

[Robert Louis Zuparko]

This doesn't apply specifically to taxonomy, but does to researchers as a
whole.
Last night I received an email from Academia,edu telling me that "An AI
created a podcast of your paper", with notation this was Private to me.
There was an option to click to listen to it, so I chose to do so, which
led me to a page entitled "AI podcast of (the name of the paper), Uploaded
my Robert Zuparko". Then I could click on another link that led to a
podcast of 4:45, and there was also an option to add this to my Academia
profile.

Well! The good part is that I was indeed an author of the paper, and the
summary that was put together was all, in all, fairly decent. BUT they made
it sound that I uploaded the paper for this process, when I did no such
thing. Also, I wasn't the lead author - I was the third author out of four,
but the podcast mentioned only my name. The other odd thing is, the paper
was written in 1998, so they went back 27 years to find it.

So I am a little disturbed about this. I suppose I can simply opt NOT to
add this podcast to my Academia profile, and that might take care of it
(but with AI. who knows?). But I did want to put this out there, in case
any of you folks have a similar experience.

-Bob Zuparko

-- 
Robert Zuparko
Research Associate
Essig Museum of Entomology
1101 Valley Life Sciences Building, #4780
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720-3112
(510) 643-0804

"If you ever feel weighed down by the bureaucracy and often mundanity of
modern life, don't fight the frustration. Let it be the catalyst for
whimsy." James Veitch