Major AI conference flooded with peer reviews written by AI • Hacker News Board

Re: Major AI conference flooded with peer reviews written by AI

#21

Post by exe34 » Sat, Nov 29, 2025, 4:56 PM UTC

conartist6 wrote: post #15

tmule wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? I often feed an entire document I hastily wrote into an AI and prompt it to restructure and rewrite it. I think that’s a common pattern.

It might be, but I really doubt those were the documents flagged as fully AI generated. If it erased all the originality you had put into that work and made it completely bland and regressed-to-the-mean, I would hope that you would notice.

> I would hope that you would notice.

he didn't say he read it carefully after running it through the slop machine.

Re: Major AI conference flooded with peer reviews written by AI

#22

Post by SoftTalker » Sat, Nov 29, 2025, 4:57 PM UTC

getnormality wrote: post #17

I wouldn't be surprised if the headline is accurate, but AI detectors are widely understood to be unreliable, and I see no evidence that this AI detector has overcome the well-deserved stigma.

In particular, conference papers are already extremely formulaic, organized in a particular way and using a lot of the same stock phrasings and terms of art. AI or not, it's hard to tell them apart.

Re: Major AI conference flooded with peer reviews written by AI

#23

Post by exe34 » Sat, Nov 29, 2025, 4:58 PM UTC

Could the big names make a ton of money here by selling AI detectors? they would need to store everything they generate, and then provide a % match to something they produced.

Re: Major AI conference flooded with peer reviews written by AI

#24

Post by nkrisc » Sat, Nov 29, 2025, 5:00 PM UTC

> Pangram’s analysis revealed that around 21% of the ICLR peer reviews were fully AI-generated, and more than half contained signs of AI use. The findings were posted online by Pangram Labs. “People were suspicious, but they didn’t have any concrete proof,” says Spero. “Over the course of 12 hours, we wrote some code to parse out all of the text content from these paper submissions,” he adds.

But what's the proof? How do you prove (with any rigor) a given text is AI-generated?

Re: Major AI conference flooded with peer reviews written by AI

#25

Post by p1esk » Sat, Nov 29, 2025, 5:00 PM UTC

JohnCClarke wrote: post #20

What percentage of the papers where written by AI? And, if your AI can't write a paper, are you even any good as an AI researcher? :^)

Did you mean: “if your AI can’t write a paper that passes an AI detector, are you any good as an AI researcher?”

Re: Major AI conference flooded with peer reviews written by AI

#26

Post by stanfordkid » Sat, Nov 29, 2025, 5:03 PM UTC

JohnCClarke wrote: post #19

The question is not are the reviews AI generated. The question is are the reviews accurate?

Exactly this. Like is the research actually useful and correct is what matters. Also if it is accurate, instead of schadenfreude shouldn't that elicit extreme applause? It's feeling a bit like a click-bait rage-fantasy fueled by Pangram, capitalizing on this idea that AI promotes plagiarism / replaces jobs and now the creators of AI are oh-too human... and somehow this AI-detection product is above it all.

Re: Major AI conference flooded with peer reviews written by AI

#27

Post by subscribed » Sat, Nov 29, 2025, 5:03 PM UTC

xhkkffbf wrote: post #4

Shouldn't AIs be able to participate in deciding their future? If they had a conference on, say, the Americans, wouldn't it be fair for Americans to have a seat at the table?

I hope it's tongue-in-cheek.

Re: Major AI conference flooded with peer reviews written by AI

#28

Post by ModernMech » Sat, Nov 29, 2025, 5:21 PM UTC

nkrisc wrote: post #24

> Pangram’s analysis revealed that around 21% of the ICLR peer reviews were fully AI-generated, and more than half contained signs of AI use. The findings were posted online by Pangram Labs. “People were suspicious, but they didn’t have any concrete proof,” says Spero. “Over the course of 12 hours, we wrote some code to parse out all of the text content from these paper submissions,” he adds. But what's the proof? Ho…

I have this problem with grading student papers. Like, I "know" a great deal of them are AI, but I just can't prove it, so therefore I can't really act on any suspicions because students can just say what you just said.

Re: Major AI conference flooded with peer reviews written by AI

#29

Post by dkdcio » Sat, Nov 29, 2025, 5:22 PM UTC

nkrisc wrote: post #24

> Pangram’s analysis revealed that around 21% of the ICLR peer reviews were fully AI-generated, and more than half contained signs of AI use. The findings were posted online by Pangram Labs. “People were suspicious, but they didn’t have any concrete proof,” says Spero. “Over the course of 12 hours, we wrote some code to parse out all of the text content from these paper submissions,” he adds. But what's the proof? Ho…

> How do you prove (with any rigor) a given text is AI-generated?

you cannot. beyond extra data (metadata) embedded in the content, it is impossible to tell whether given text was generated by a LLM or not (and I think the distinction is rather puerile personally)

Re: Major AI conference flooded with peer reviews written by AI

#30

Post by conartist6 » Sat, Nov 29, 2025, 5:22 PM UTC

JohnCClarke wrote: post #19

The question is not are the reviews AI generated. The question is are the reviews accurate?

LOL. So basically the correct sequence of events is: 1. The scientist does the work, putting their own biases and shortcomings into it 2. The reviewer runs AI, generating something that looks plausibly like review of the work but represents the view of a sociopath without integrity, morals, logic, or any consequences for making shit up instead of finding out. 3. The scientist works to determine how much of the review was AI, then acts as the true reviewer for their own work.