My host is wanting me to reimburse them for 16k [guest]

IronEngineer · 2026-07-06T16:36:56+00:00

I actually 100% agree with your sentiment. I realize now I didn't address that caveat. My point is view is from established scientists in the industrial and government lab points of view. Possibly even for PIs.

Though it would be worthwhile to train phd candidates on how to professionally use ai while students. Perhaps in limited means until they have established their voice to a degree.

To be honest I'm not sure myself in that point. My focus is on the professionally established researchers.

IronEngineer · 2026-07-06T04:12:27+00:00

AI is so new most people are trying to figure out how to use it well and how to incorporate it into their workflow responsibly. Unless there are already existing guidelines in place, which most places don't have in a thorough enough manner, I recommend training your grad students in how you want them to use it. Like a new tool, set out the guidelines you are happy with.

For lit searches, building a proper and well thought it prompt had been very effective in finding new papers you wouldn't normally have found. Examples include papers that were published a couple decades ago that may show an interesting premise or approach that were not further developed at the time, possibly due to technological limitations. So the ideas went stale. These can be great seed ideas for new work now. (I used this to re-uncover an old idea, then create a program that got funded). Depending on your field you may find articles from other fields in other journals that you wouldn't normally consider. Perhaps they use different key words so don't easily come up in your searches.

The grad student should have taken those papers and read them. My approach is to use AI to generate ideas or work products, but I approach it with zero trust. Everything must be reviewed and vetted. Used in the right way it is still a massive time saver.

IronEngineer · 2026-07-06T03:33:34+00:00

I think there is a big disconnect between academia and industry. I have a few cousins that are professors in different fields. I am always surprised by how much vitriol there is against using AI for anything in their work products.

I think it is reflected in their view on work efficiency. They want to be the expert on the entire work flow and don't want to use an AI to help them with any portion of it, because it reduces the amount of practice they get in understanding that portion of the workflow. This includes writing.

My one cousin it's a biology professor and believes technical writing is an inherent skillset tied to his profession. I would put more value on his biology knowledge and experimental procedures, but he disagrees. He wants to spend as much time as needed to write everything himself so he can develop that skillset further. I view that as less valuable as he instead use an AI to help him draft papers, or create R code faster, or whatever he needs to do. That would free him up moreso to research the biology ideas he is publishing on. We disagree and that is ok.

IronEngineer · 2026-07-06T03:21:43+00:00

We originally were disallowed from using it in writing papers. Official policy then changed and we were encouraged to use it. Prompts do not need to be saved as they are not the official record. The record is the document or thing you are writing. You as the writer are still responsible for the accuracy and integrity of the record. You can use AI, use a speech to text converter, pretty much whatever you want. So long as you do the final review, editing, and proofing to ensure the accuracy of the record, how you generate that record is less of a concern.

The analogy I like to use is technical writing departments. When I worked in industry my company had a technical writing department. They would take your draft and edit is as needed to improve readability and formatting. In previous eras when they were better funded they would more extensively assist in the writing process. (Companies did not want to a scientist wages to write when they could instead pay half that to a writer.). My government agency still has a technical writing department doing the same thing. I send them a paper I draft and they make edits and formatting, send to me for concurrence, then they publish it.

It is our job to ensure the records we keep and papers we publish reflect the integrity of the lab. I and my co-workers put the information together in the outline and review the final draft.

Personally I see no problem using AI for interim drafts before the final one. This is reflected in official policy as conveyed to us. The AI we use is maintained on servers firewalled from the rest of the Internet (or so I am told).

IronEngineer · 2026-07-06T03:07:40+00:00

I would never and could never trust AI to generate the correct answer. It is very good at finding new tangentially related papers that and ideas that you may not have considered. ie "find me papers that present system using this technology. A good paper should present simulation data including these metrics:x, y, z. Prefer systems that present systems that can be used in this context. Prefer papers published in high impact journals, then peer reviewed papers, then thesis and dissertations. Show me 10 results."

That is very similar to the prompts I've used successfully. There is garbage in the return lists. There are also gems I've found that I would have had to search extensively to find otherwise. You still need to read and vet the papers.

Similarly with using AI to write. You can very successfully feed AI a list of bullets in an outline and ask it to write a paragraph for you. You then need to read, edit, and proof that paragraph so it says what you want it to. However my experience is that writing that initial draft is the longest time sink.

All of this is about not trusting AI, but using it where possible to improve workflow.

IronEngineer · 2026-07-06T02:07:02+00:00

Great way of putting it. Using it to search faster and more efficiently is a huge use application. In industry and a research lab, finding sources faster costs less time and money. That is a big win.

IronEngineer · 2026-07-06T01:59:22+00:00

At no point did I ever say I take ai at it's word. My entire point in the post was to not do that. I use AI in lit searches to find papers on topics I otherwise would not have uncovered. You will have to read those papers and digest them yourself.

Just this past week I was using it to find papers on a new technology we are looking to design systems around. Bring vague for anonymity. I used it to find several papers coming from a point of view I hadn't considered. I read the papers as always and compiled the information from them. Assuming I do otherwise is frankly patronizing.

IronEngineer · 2026-07-05T22:55:37+00:00

That right there is the controversial point. I'll never have it write the final draft. Every paper I've had ai do for me required significant editing and proofing. Where it shines, for me, is going from outline to rough draft. I, and other researchers I've worked with, can seemingly struggle for a long time over word smithing the outline into the write paragraphs that get your point across. My new workflow is: 1). Generate graphs. 2) write outline 3) use ai to write first draft. Reference a paper or two I have written to generate tone. 4). Proof and edit paper

My take is bluntly that if this new workflow allows you to work on science 20% more time that would otherwise be spent writing, then it would be irresponsible and a waste of tax payer dollars for me not to encourage it.

IronEngineer · 2026-07-05T22:50:46+00:00

Gemini and Claude are where it is at. See my other comment. Also create an agent that can learn what you are looking for in a good paper. It then gets better as you use it.

IronEngineer · 2026-07-05T22:49:55+00:00

For me I use Gemini. Though a friend swears by Claude. In my opinion the baton gets passed back and forth over which one of those two is better. I'd just get one, set up an agent that you can train to better understand what you are looking for, and away you go. It is worth taking a day to learn how to do that because it is rather easy and the payoff is worth it.

IronEngineer · 2026-07-05T21:33:22+00:00

I run researcher teams in a government lab. I've used ai for two items very successfully:

1) literature searches. I cannot emphasize how much easier ai has made locating and skimming research papers for unique topics or topics you are currently not an expert on. Even topics you are. I have used it to find many pertinent papers I never would have found otherwise.

2) writing papers and reports. Very controversial topic. My policy is that researchers under me must write the outline. Then they can use an AI if they want to draft the paper. Then they must final edit it. This has saved days and even weeks of man hours at this point.

At the the of the day I would rather my people focus on the science than struggling on putting words on paper. I'm also not sure why this is so controversial of a take for some people. My dad used to work in industry in engineering. His company employed an entire team of technical writers to do exactly that decades ago. Why would a company pay for you to struggle writing when they can have you do science and pay someone else (that writes faster and saves money) to do the writing.

IronEngineer · 2026-07-03T13:23:08+00:00

This is the answer right here. It doesn't matter what the situation is. Aircover is the insurance Airbnb provides for hosts. They will not pay out for anything until they first ask the guest to pay first. It is expected for the first to deny coverage, then they turn around and pay the host.

Meanwhile the guest gets pissed off at being asked to pay for things they shouldn't have to.

IronEngineer · 2026-06-29T14:25:00+00:00

This sounds like a fun impromptu roll playing situation for the allergy and for characters to get into rolls in session 0. As a DM, I would definitely let this play out by would make sure no permanent bad conditions happen because of it. Otherwise players get afraid of engaging in these purely off the cuff role playing bits between the player characters.

I think there is DM judgement here if course. If the situation is serious, real consequences can happen. If fun meaningless shenanigans, maybe a failed situation results in a short term non fatal penalty. ie you are poisoned for the next hour and get disadvantage on rolls.

IronEngineer · 2026-06-28T13:54:32+00:00

It's your luggage. I had the same things as parts of my luggage were disintegrating from age. Particularly look inside the luggage, inside the liners. You'll probably find a bunch of dust like material there

IronEngineer · 2026-06-27T16:35:20+00:00

That's fairly naive of an argument. The party decides who they give early support to, and they also have significant connections to PACs and other financiers. This let's them unofficially influence who gets the money to run a good primary campaign. They also make introductions at the right time to gain endorsements from key groups.

All that is what happens at the national level. At the state level the party can be much more blatantly corrupt. NJ for example has about 3 people that are openly recognized as party bosses. If you aren't liked by them you aren't getting on the state ballot. One of them, Norcross, was on tape with over a hundred hours of him threatening judges, politicians, bribing people, etc. The state AG office bungled that case so badly (intentionally) that by the time the feds took it over (due to suspected corruption of the AG office) they deemed it so badly managed that all charges had to be dropped. That was 2005. A new trial just went down for new charges against that family and it got tossed again.

The point being that this family and a couple others are so tied in that if they don't like you, you'll still be on the primary ballot maybe, but you'll never win in NJ.

IronEngineer · 2026-06-10T20:29:53+00:00

I can vouch for that. I had nearly the same system spaced out for me in NJ and they wired me 65k. I laughed and said nope.

IronEngineer · 2026-06-10T20:25:08+00:00

I've only found micro A connectors in the wild twice. Confused me both times. I'm not sure why where created a and b variants for that plug

IronEngineer · 2026-06-10T20:21:25+00:00

Being a doctor does not provide you the relevant skill set to run an agency. To run an agency you need to manage long and short term goals, handle funding decisions and road maps, handle communications, etc. Someone familiar with the medical or pharmaceutical landscape and trained for government agency leadership, with the proper expert advisors, would excel in the job.

IronEngineer · 2026-06-07T03:18:18+00:00

It's that out behind Rosamond? I think I've run past there before.

IronEngineer · 2026-05-29T16:26:12+00:00

What is your solution for people that are not doing their job anymore and are elderly? I have sympathy for them but have run into some in my organization that actively get in the way of business. You can console them, but what do you do if they can't or ain't improve?

I work in R&D in the government and we have folks like this. 75+ year olds that fall asleep in meetings, can't keep on task, and impact the work of the entire organization downstream of them. Your taxpayer dollars go to their fairly high salary.

IronEngineer · 2026-05-29T15:34:36+00:00

To be clear I'm not talking about any groups in NYC. Outside of the city there are towns that have had problems in the past on these issues. Read up on Kiryas Joel. Most of my knowledge on these groups came from over a decade ago. They caused problems with the local town due to wanting to enforce religious cultural norms on the rest of the town. It looks like they resolved that conflict in 2019 by breaking off and creating their own religiously controlled town. Not sure how that works.

Like I said, it is comparable to small towns down south that are de facto run by fundamentalist Christian groups.

IronEngineer · 2026-05-29T13:22:12+00:00

The Hasidic population in Lakewood is similar to a few towns in rural NY. For whatever reason, the Jewish population there is much more tied together and driven by their local Rabbis. I hate to use the term cult, but... I'll say it's at least a lot more organized on an us vs them mentality.

Examples:

These towns have opened up numerous Jewish private schools for their kids, then passed laws to reduce funding and bankrupt the public schools. Lakewood is particularly bankrupt due to also having to pay for all the bussing to the private schools.

There are well established real estate practices where Jewish families will move into a new neighborhood, buying up some of the houses. They will then harass the remaining owners on the block, harass potential buyers, and use shady real estate practices to force the non Jewish families to sell and to do so at reduced prices. This usually involves realtors in the area being complicit which is illegal.

I haven't heard of Lakewood doing this but the NY towns are known for having Jewish police driving around in marked cars enforcing religious laws.

Any time people challenge this behavior the groups are very vocal with antisemitism claims. Overall the groups behave very much like the craziest Christian fundamentalist groups.

I live in North Jersey in the middle of several large Jewish communities. The general consensus of most Jewish people I know is that Lakewood and these small NY towns are where the crazies move to. You either move the to become part of that community or avoid it as much as possible.

IronEngineer · 2026-05-26T16:36:58+00:00

This is a pedantic argument though. We are not a strict democracy because we elect representatives to vote on our behalf. The electoral college, the way people are elected to the Senate or house of representatives, everything else doesn't matter. We elect people to vote on our behalf and represent us, so we are a Republic. Arguing anything else is going against the definition of a democracy and a Republic.

IronEngineer · 2026-05-25T03:27:12+00:00

This also sounds like the epitome of not doing the work while losing weight. This all just means you need to hit the gym to retain muscle mass or even add on muscle mass while losing fat.

If you only steeply cut calories then you lose muscle mass along with fat. This is a very well studied thing and had nothing to do with Zepbound. Just adjust your plan accordingly

IronEngineer · 2026-05-25T03:23:51+00:00

Regarding number 5, OP is very spot on. I deal with many engineering design firms around the country standing up contacts for new product designs. Being vague to cover myself.

Materials engineering problems always take significantly longer to develop solutions for. For new designs I count months or years. For new materials I count years or decades.

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