I'm not familiar with the world of academic publishing, so I want to ask: how is the industry making sure that submissions aren't at least partially AI-generated?
Is it standard practice for authors to have to defend their submissions via interview like this? If not, why not?
Does the vetting process vary with the quality of the publisher?
As an outsider, it's extremely worrying that anyone would even attempt to submit an AI-generated paper for publication in an academic journal. At that level I would have assumed literally everybody should know better than to even try.
> Is it standard practice for authors to have to defend their submissions via interview like this? If not, why not?
It isn't, but maybe it should be. For post-grad qualifications oral defense is standard, and I didn't mind defending my central thesis then, and won't mind now.
Not in a direct interview style, but most us conferences can request additional information or feedback. If they conditionally accept or reject a paper, that conditional relies on feedback from the author(s).
Interviews like this are interesting, but in no way can scale to the infinite paper slop conferences are facing.
> Not in a direct interview style, but most us conferences can request additional information or feedback. If they conditionally accept or reject a paper, that conditional relies on feedback from the author(s).
Requesting feedback is useless, as the article points out - the "authors" could not answer basic questions during the interview, but after the interview were able to send full explanations to the interviewer.
If you have indirect feedback ("please answer these questions we have") the "author" will simply feed it into an LLM and send the results back. You need to get the author to do an oral defense to verify that they wrote the paper.
This is the main problem with AI generated output, whether it's a research paper, a blog, an email, a comment on a forum, similar: the value in knowing that a human wrote $X sends a signal - that the human understands what it is they wrote, even if they misunderstand the concepts.
When you get a message from someone who is a "I only used an LLM to clean it up, the thoughts are all mine"[1] person, you cannot engage with them, because they may not understand the message they transmitted, and so any human engaging with them is only burning their own time for no gain.
When you get a message from a real person, you get not only the message, you also get a signal about their understanding. That signal is missing in AI generated messages.
> I only used an LLM to clean it up, the thoughts are all mine"
I mean, it seems to me like that should be nearly everybody at this point, right? There are at least some elements of using LLMs that are the equivalent of a spell check, like asking to make sure that links work and that references are to the thing they're supposed to be, and so on. I feel like the only difference at this point is between people who do that and say that they do, and people who do that and don't say that they do.
wackget · · focus · HN ↗
Is it standard practice for authors to have to defend their submissions via interview like this? If not, why not?
Does the vetting process vary with the quality of the publisher?
As an outsider, it's extremely worrying that anyone would even attempt to submit an AI-generated paper for publication in an academic journal. At that level I would have assumed literally everybody should know better than to even try.
lelanthran · · focus · HN ↗
It isn't, but maybe it should be. For post-grad qualifications oral defense is standard, and I didn't mind defending my central thesis then, and won't mind now.
doc_ick · · focus · HN ↗
Interviews like this are interesting, but in no way can scale to the infinite paper slop conferences are facing.
lelanthran · · focus · HN ↗
Requesting feedback is useless, as the article points out - the "authors" could not answer basic questions during the interview, but after the interview were able to send full explanations to the interviewer.
If you have indirect feedback ("please answer these questions we have") the "author" will simply feed it into an LLM and send the results back. You need to get the author to do an oral defense to verify that they wrote the paper.
This is the main problem with AI generated output, whether it's a research paper, a blog, an email, a comment on a forum, similar: the value in knowing that a human wrote $X sends a signal - that the human understands what it is they wrote, even if they misunderstand the concepts.
When you get a message from someone who is a "I only used an LLM to clean it up, the thoughts are all mine"[1] person, you cannot engage with them, because they may not understand the message they transmitted, and so any human engaging with them is only burning their own time for no gain.
When you get a message from a real person, you get not only the message, you also get a signal about their understanding. That signal is missing in AI generated messages.
==========================
[1] Sure, buddy. We believe you /s.
CPLX · · focus · HN ↗
I mean, it seems to me like that should be nearly everybody at this point, right? There are at least some elements of using LLMs that are the equivalent of a spell check, like asking to make sure that links work and that references are to the thing they're supposed to be, and so on. I feel like the only difference at this point is between people who do that and say that they do, and people who do that and don't say that they do.
bradbondd · · focus · HN ↗
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