AI-generated papers shake trust in scientific publishing
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Freelance writer Benjamin Skuse used AI to generate papers to test IEEE's defenses and found that its human review and research integrity detection tools can currently still keep up with the forgery speed of free tools; but more advanced LLMs no longer make the low-level mistakes of the free versions. Meanwhile, the volunteer team of Wikipedia's WikiProject AI Cleanup is cleaning up AI-generated content with fewer people and tools. These two threads together point to the impact of AI-generated "slop" content on the foundation of trust in scientific publishing and knowledge platforms.
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- Hacker News AIAI Slop Threatens Trust in Science
The article discusses how AI-generated "slop" is flooding social media and challenging the integrity of the scientific record, citing journalist Benjamin Skuse's experiment in which AI-generated papers were submitted to IEEE's publishing defenses. It also covers WikiProject AI Cleanup, a volunteer effort to remove AI-generated material from Wikipedia, and warns that eroding trust in the scientific record and shared facts undermines trust in institutions that curate human knowledge.
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