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2% of ICML papers desk rejected because the authors used LLM in their reviews

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Re: 2% of ICML papers desk rejected because the authors used LLM in their reviews

#21

Post by grey-area »

mijoharas wrote: post #3

One thing to note. They were quite conservative in their approach, so the only things that were rejected were from people who had agreed not to use an LLM and almost definitely did use an LLM (since they fed hidden watermarked instructions to the llm's). This means the true number of people that used LLM's in their review (even in group A that had agreed not to) is likely higher. Also worth noting, 10% of these autho…

Yes for those in group B I'd suspect many were doing exactly what these cheaters in group A were doing - submitting the unaltered output of an LLM as their review.

Re: 2% of ICML papers desk rejected because the authors used LLM in their reviews

#22

Post by CoastalCoder »

mikkupikku wrote: post #11
hodgehog11 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking this too, but I don't believe this is the case, and I feel like it would not be a good idea either. Most of these people are likely students; this should be a learning moment, but I don't think it is yet grounds for their entire academic career to be crippled by being unable to publish in a top-tier ML venue.

If this is tolerated, it sends exactly the wrong kind of message. The students, if they are, should be banned for life. Let them serve as an example for myriads of future students, this will be a better outcome in the long run. This didn't trip for people who were merely bouncing ideas off a LLM, they caught people who copy and pasted straight from their LLM.

This line of reasoning interests me because it seems to arise in other contexts as well.

Do very harsh punishments significantly reduce future occurrences of the offense in question?

I've heard opponents of the death penalty argue that it's generallynot the case. E.g., because often the criminals aren't reasoning in terms that factor in the death penalty.

On the other hand (and perhaps I'm misinformed), I've heard that some countries with death penalties for drug dealers have genuinely fewer problems with drug addiction. Lower, I assume, than the numbers you'd get from simply executing every user.

So I'm curious where the truth lies.

Re: 2% of ICML papers desk rejected because the authors used LLM in their reviews

#23

Post by jona-f »

linkregister wrote: post #16
mikkupikku wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this is tolerated, it sends exactly the wrong kind of message. The students, if they are, should be banned for life. Let them serve as an example for myriads of future students, this will be a better outcome in the long run. This didn't trip for people who were merely bouncing ideas off a LLM, they caught people who copy and pasted straight from their LLM.

It's not a fully consensus view, but a majority of sociologists agree that high severity deterrence has limited effectiveness against crime. Instead, certainty of enforcement is the most salient factor.

But the mob wants their kick.

Re: 2% of ICML papers desk rejected because the authors used LLM in their reviews

#24

Post by crimsoneer »

linkregister wrote: post #16
mikkupikku wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this is tolerated, it sends exactly the wrong kind of message. The students, if they are, should be banned for life. Let them serve as an example for myriads of future students, this will be a better outcome in the long run. This didn't trip for people who were merely bouncing ideas off a LLM, they caught people who copy and pasted straight from their LLM.

It's not a fully consensus view, but a majority of sociologists agree that high severity deterrence has limited effectiveness against crime. Instead, certainty of enforcement is the most salient factor.

Yup, precisely this. Doing something bad is rarely a rational commitment and cost of benefits. Likelihood and celerity of getting caught seem to be the driving factors.

Re: 2% of ICML papers desk rejected because the authors used LLM in their reviews

#25

Post by CoastalCoder »

harmf wrote: post #17
mikkupikku wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this is tolerated, it sends exactly the wrong kind of message. The students, if they are, should be banned for life. Let them serve as an example for myriads of future students, this will be a better outcome in the long run. This didn't trip for people who were merely bouncing ideas off a LLM, they caught people who copy and pasted straight from their LLM.

[flagged]

FYI we tend to use up votes rather than "I agree" comments, partly because it keeps the overall signal-to-noise ratio for comments higher.

Re: 2% of ICML papers desk rejected because the authors used LLM in their reviews

#27

Post by armchairhacker »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #22
mikkupikku wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this is tolerated, it sends exactly the wrong kind of message. The students, if they are, should be banned for life. Let them serve as an example for myriads of future students, this will be a better outcome in the long run. This didn't trip for people who were merely bouncing ideas off a LLM, they caught people who copy and pasted straight from their LLM.

This line of reasoning interests me because it seems to arise in other contexts as well. Do very harsh punishments significantly reduce future occurrences of the offense in question? I've heard opponents of the death penalty argue that it's generally not the case. E.g., because often the criminals aren't reasoning in terms that factor in the death penalty. On the other hand (and perhaps I'm misinformed), I've heard t…

Is the death penalty scarier than life in prison?

Re: 2% of ICML papers desk rejected because the authors used LLM in their reviews

#28

Post by wood_spirit »

grey-area wrote: post #20

Interesting, so someone submitting a paper for review could also submit one with hidden instructions for LLMs to summarise or review it in a very positive light. Given this detection method works so well in the use case of feeding reviewing LLMs instructions, it should also work for the original submitted paper itself, as long as it was passed along with its watermark intact. Even those just using LLMs to summarise c…

Then these papers with these instructions get included in the training corpus for the next frontier models and those models learn to put these kinds of instructions into what they generate and …?

Re: 2% of ICML papers desk rejected because the authors used LLM in their reviews

#29

Post by _flux »

linkregister wrote: post #16
mikkupikku wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this is tolerated, it sends exactly the wrong kind of message. The students, if they are, should be banned for life. Let them serve as an example for myriads of future students, this will be a better outcome in the long run. This didn't trip for people who were merely bouncing ideas off a LLM, they caught people who copy and pasted straight from their LLM.

It's not a fully consensus view, but a majority of sociologists agree that high severity deterrence has limited effectiveness against crime. Instead, certainty of enforcement is the most salient factor.

But this method is now spent, as if someone is determined on keep using LLM, this should be pretty easy to overcome.

I suppose though new methods could be devised, but it's not "certainty" that they will catch them.

Re: 2% of ICML papers desk rejected because the authors used LLM in their reviews

#30

Post by Tade0 »

mikkupikku wrote: post #11
hodgehog11 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking this too, but I don't believe this is the case, and I feel like it would not be a good idea either. Most of these people are likely students; this should be a learning moment, but I don't think it is yet grounds for their entire academic career to be crippled by being unable to publish in a top-tier ML venue.

If this is tolerated, it sends exactly the wrong kind of message. The students, if they are, should be banned for life. Let them serve as an example for myriads of future students, this will be a better outcome in the long run. This didn't trip for people who were merely bouncing ideas off a LLM, they caught people who copy and pasted straight from their LLM.

My understanding is that something among those lines happened:

> All Policy A (no LLMs) reviews that were detected to be LLM generated were removed from the system. If more than half of the reviews submitted by a Policy A reviewer were detected to be LLM generated, then all of their reviews were deleted, and the reviewer themselves was removed from the reviewer pool.

Half is a bit lenient in my view, but I suppose they wanted to avoid even a single false positive.

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