Hi! I am Creesch, also creesch on other platforms :)

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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • I feel like this is the third time people are selective reading into what I have said.

    I specifically acknowledge that AI is already causing all sorts of issues. I am also saying that there is also another issue at play. One that might be exacerbated by the use of AI but at its root isn’t caused by AI.

    In fact, in this very thread people have pointed out that *in this case" the journal in question is simply the issue. https://beehaw.org/comment/2416937

    In fact. The only people likely noticed is, ironically, the fact that AI was being used.

    And again I fully agree, AI is causing massive issues already and disturbing a lot of things in destructive ways. But, that doesn’t mean all bullshit out there is caused by AI. Even if AI is tangible involved.

    If that still, in your view, somehow makes me sound like an defensive AI evangelist then I don’t know what to tell you…


  • I said clickbait about the AI specific thing. Which I do stand by. To be more direct, if peer reviewers don’t review and editors don’t edit you can have all the theoretical safeguards in place, but those will do jack shit. Procedures are meaningless if they are not being followed properly.

    Attributions can be faked, just like these images are now already being faked. If the peer review process is already under tremendous pressure to keep up for various reasons then adding more things to it might actually just make things worse.


  • I feel like two different problems are conflated into one though.

    1. The academic review process is broken.
    2. AI generated bullshit is going to cause all sorts of issues.

    Point two can contribute to point 1 but for that a bunch of stuff needs to happen. Correct my if I am wrong but as far as my understanding of peer-review processes are supposed to go it is something along the lines of:

    1. A researcher submits their manuscript to a journal.
    2. An editor of that journal validates the paper fits within the scope and aims of the journal. It might get rejected here or it gets send out for review.
    3. When it does get send out for review to several experts in the field, the actual peer reviewers. These are supposed to be knowledgeable about the specific topic the paper is about. These then read the paper closely and evaluate things like methodology, results, (lack of) data, and conclusions.
    4. Feedback goes to the editor, who then makes a call about the paper. It either gets accepted, revisions are required or it gets rejected.

    If at point 3 people don’t do the things I highlighted in bold then to me it seems like it is a bit silly to make this about AI. If at point 4 the editor ignores most feedback for the peer reviewers, then it again has very little to do with AI and everything the a base process being broken.

    To summarize, yes AI is going to fuck up a lot of information, it already has. But by just shouting, “AI is at it again with its antics!” at every turn instead of looking further and at other core issues we will only make things worse.

    Edit:

    To be clear, I am not even saying that peer reviewers or editors should “just do their job already”. But fake papers have been increasingly an issue for well over a decade as far as I am aware. The way the current peer review process works simply doesn’t seem to scale to where we are today. And yes, AI is not going to help with that, but it is still building upon something that already was broken before AI was used to abuse it.



  • I totally see why you are worried about all the aspects AI introduces, especially regarding bias and the authenticity of generated content. My main gripe, though, is with the oversight (or lack thereof) in the peer review process. If a journal can’t even spot AI-generated images, it raises red flags about the entire paper’s credibility, regardless of the content’s origin. It’s not about AI per se. It is about ensuring the integrity of scholarly work. Because realistically speaking, how much of the paper itself is actually good or valid? Even more interesting, and this would bring AI back in the picture. Is the entire paper even written by a human or is the entire thing fake? Or maybe that is also not interesting at all as there are already tons of papers published with other fake data in it. People that actually don’t give a shit about the academic process and just care about their names published somewhere likely already have employed other methods as well. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a paper out there with equally bogus images created by an actual human for pennies on Fiverr.

    The crux of the matter is the robustness of the review process, which should safeguard against any form of dubious content, AI-generated or otherwise. Which is what I also said in my initial reply, I am most certainly not waving hands and saying that review is enough. I am saying that it is much more likely the review process has already failed miserably and most likely has been for a while.

    Which, again to me, seems like the bigger issue.


  • This feels like clickbait to me, as the fundamental problem clearly isn’t AI. At least to me it isn’t. The title would have worked as well without AI in the title. The fact that the images are AI generated isn’t even that relevant. What is worrying is that the peer review process, at least for this journal clearly is faulty as no actual review of the material took place.

    If we do want to talk about AI. I am impressed how well the model managed to actually create text made up of actual letters resembling words. From what I have seen so far that is often just as difficult for these models as hands are.