> I disagree, people who are not expert consumers of information, but do think “arXiv is science stuff” are easily misled
I think you are talking about an extremely small segment of the population, so I don't think we're talking about a very large social impact. I'm also unconvinced that that segment doesn't generally take ordinary tech press releases at face value anyway.
> I trust citations from private companies without strong academic pedigree
OK, but the first two authors on this have doctorates in ML and applied photonics respectively. They don't have peer review on this paper, but I don't think you can say they're lacking in academic pedigree.
> It’s pretty easy to con investors if you have the same “look” as a real lab.
I don't know. My feeling is that the "conning investors who are terrible at due diligence" game is largely unavoidable and mostly a zero-sum competition between con artists. So while it's obviously bad, I'm not convinced that the specifics matter all that much. Fools and their money, and all that.
I think you are talking about an extremely small segment of the population, so I don't think we're talking about a very large social impact. I'm also unconvinced that that segment doesn't generally take ordinary tech press releases at face value anyway.
> I trust citations from private companies without strong academic pedigree
OK, but the first two authors on this have doctorates in ML and applied photonics respectively. They don't have peer review on this paper, but I don't think you can say they're lacking in academic pedigree.
> It’s pretty easy to con investors if you have the same “look” as a real lab.
I don't know. My feeling is that the "conning investors who are terrible at due diligence" game is largely unavoidable and mostly a zero-sum competition between con artists. So while it's obviously bad, I'm not convinced that the specifics matter all that much. Fools and their money, and all that.