Unedited AI Text is Appearing in Scientific Journals

The prevalence of AI generated text online has caused concern because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up lowering the bar for written content. It’s not easier than ever to churn out subpar content full of misinformation, but one might assume that this type of writing would never make its way to a scientific journal. In spite of the fact that this is the case, it turns out that that’s exactly what ended up happening with all things having been considered and taken into account.

Google Scholar, the research tool that allows you to pull up research papers, was recently found to contain phrases such as “As of my last knowledge update”. It is important to note that this phrase is famously used by ChatGPT to provide context about any and all answers it provides.

It gets worse. Apparently if you search "as of my last knowledge update" or "i don't have access to real-time data" on Google Scholar, tons of AI generated papers pop up. This is truly the worst timeline. pic.twitter.com/YXZziarUSm

— Life After My Ph.D. (@LifeAfterMyPhD) March 18, 2024

A paper called Quantum Entanglement: Examining its Nature and Implications that was published in the “Journal of Material Sciences & Manfacturing Research” contains this phrase. It bears mentioning that the previous typo is intentional, since the title of this supposedly peer reviewed journal contains it. A recent tweet also went viral after it showed the phrase popping up in scientific journals.

The combo of predatory journals, the pressure to publish, and ChatGpt is going to accelerate the destruction of the trustworthiness scientific articles.

These authors didn't even edit the AI output and the journal published it. 😭 pic.twitter.com/n7XbG5lbxh

— Koltai.bsky.social (@KolinaKoltai) March 14, 2024

However, these journals are not exactly the most renowned in the world. Rather, they were small scale journals that didn’t really have much of a reputation. This just goes to show how important it is to make sure that you are only paying attention to information provided in journals that are vetted. The low level journals that AI has been found in are thought to be troublesome in the scientific community, since they publish anything for a fee and offer a certificate of publication as well.

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This might cause some to lose their faith in scientifically proven information that has been independently verified. With misinformation reaching such unprecedented levels, such issues may very well end up being catastrophic in the long run as well as in the short term. As a result, many are calling for more work to be done to prevent AI being misused in such a manner.

Image: DIW-Aigen

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by Zia Muhammad via Digital Information World