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New arXiv policy: 1-year ban for hallucinated references

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Re: New arXiv policy: 1-year ban for hallucinated references

#231

Post by chadgpt3 »

dataflow wrote: post #57
LPisGood wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fraud requires intent to deceive _or_ reckless disregard, sometimes called, “conscious indifference” for the veracity of the statement asserted.

No. One single hallucinated citation on a document with you as an author is not evidence of your reckless disregard for anything. These exaggerations are crazy and you would absolutely deny such accusations if you missed your co-author's AI hallucinating a citation on your manuscript too. At best it would be careless , if you really relish extrapolating from one data point and smearing people's character based on tha…

How do you accidentally hallucinate just one citation?

If the bread is moldy in one spot, throw out the whole loaf, because the same invisible process that produced the mold spot is taking place throughout the loaf.

Re: New arXiv policy: 1-year ban for hallucinated references

#232

Post by dataflow »

lelanthran wrote: post #150
dataflow wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Then how long are they disqualifying them from submitting prior to acceptance, if not lifetime? It certainly doesn't say 1 year or something.

> Then how long are they disqualifying them from submitting prior to acceptance, if not lifetime? Well, "lifetime ban" means "you are not allowed back in". Their ban specifically allows you back in (after a specified period) subject to fulfilling a single constraint. It's conditional acceptance back in, which is not the same as a lifetime ban which is unconditional.

[dead]

Re: New arXiv policy: 1-year ban for hallucinated references

#233

Post by dataflow »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #226
toast0 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many papers have 100 authors? Again, I'm not in academia, but most of the papers I see have two to five authors; maybe I've seen one or two with ten authors. Regardless, if I'm signing my name on something, I check it out. A reference that doesn't exist is like a source release that doesn't compile. Any one of the 100 person team could have figured it out but no one did. In a 100 person team you get diffuse respo…

There are lots of 100-author papers, especially from big projects. Responsibility really is diffuse. That's the nature of things. On a 100-author paper, 80 people are there because they worked on the upstream data source. 15 are there because they gave advice to the primary author. 3 are there because they wrote individual sections or appendices. 1 is there because they proof-read the paper and made general suggestio…

Thanks for this.

Re: New arXiv policy: 1-year ban for hallucinated references

#234

Post by dataflow »

kmaitreys wrote: post #160
dataflow wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You seem incredibly upset you can't get away with fraud and that people are calling it fraud. Yeah, that's exactly what I've been upset about. You really nailed it!

I hope you don't do science because this is how reputation get tainted.

Poe's law really is a force to be reckoned with.

Re: New arXiv policy: 1-year ban for hallucinated references

#235

Post by dataflow »

BonoboIO wrote: post #56
dataflow wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not the kind of mistake that is possible unless you're engaging in fraud anyway. Seriously? You can't fathom an honest researcher asking for AI to find a citation they know exists, and the AI inserting or modifying a citation incorrectly without them realizing? If you find evidence of fraud by all means lay down the hammer. Using a single hallucinated citation like it's some kind of ironclad proxy just because…

Verifying that the reference you cite actually exists is the absolute minimum standard for academic work. It is not optional, not something to skip because of a deadline, and not something to outsource blindly to hallucination-prone AI. If someone cannot meet that bar, they have no business publishing research papers. I have written academic papers myself, and I find it astonishing that people are trying to justify t…

> I have written academic papers myself

So have I. That doesn't place me on some pedestal.

> A one-year ban is not a lifetime ban.

Nobody said it was. Nobody was even objecting to it.

Please (re-?)read past the first 8 words of [1], the first 3 sentences of [2], or the first 3 tweets of the original tweet thread. You appear to have imagined (shall we call this a hallucination?) and responded to something that was never claimed. Which is especially unfortunate, given the very topic of the lecture here.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48141324

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48142322

Re: New arXiv policy: 1-year ban for hallucinated references

#237

Post by LPisGood »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #227
drysart wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not as much of a lack of seriousness as excusing away hallucinations as not that big of a deal in what's supposed to be a researched, scholarly body of work written by humans.

In 2026, LLMs are highly intelligent. In many ways, they even surpass human intelligence and ability. Dismissing them as "bullshit generators" is utterly unserious, and shows that one does not want to deal with the reality of the situation. I don't see anyone excusing hallucinated citations. I see people arguing that this is an overreaction by the arXiv. AI is going to become a major part of research, including in wr…

Hallucinating citations is “generating bullshit” in the purest sense.

Re: New arXiv policy: 1-year ban for hallucinated references

#238

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

LPisGood wrote: post #237
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2026, LLMs are highly intelligent. In many ways, they even surpass human intelligence and ability. Dismissing them as "bullshit generators" is utterly unserious, and shows that one does not want to deal with the reality of the situation. I don't see anyone excusing hallucinated citations. I see people arguing that this is an overreaction by the arXiv. AI is going to become a major part of research, including in wr…

Hallucinating citations is “generating bullshit” in the purest sense.

Like humans, LLMs sometimes bullshit. That doesn't mean it's in any way reasonable to dismiss LLMs in general as "bullshit generators."

Re: New arXiv policy: 1-year ban for hallucinated references

#239

Post by LPisGood »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #238
LPisGood wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hallucinating citations is “generating bullshit” in the purest sense.

Like humans, LLMs sometimes bullshit. That doesn't mean it's in any way reasonable to dismiss LLMs in general as "bullshit generators."

Maybe, maybe not, but clearly using them to generate bullshit citations is acting with disregard for the truth.

Re: New arXiv policy: 1-year ban for hallucinated references

#240

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

LPisGood wrote: post #239
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like humans, LLMs sometimes bullshit. That doesn't mean it's in any way reasonable to dismiss LLMs in general as "bullshit generators."

Maybe, maybe not, but clearly using them to generate bullshit citations is acting with disregard for the truth.

Depends on how exactly it happened.

If the author just wanted to add a citation to some canonical paper (like "Attention is all you need") at the last minute, used LLM autocomplete to do it, and didn't carefully check that the citation was correct, then a year-long ban is a massive overreaction. A careless miscitation is not on the same level as something like data manipulation.

In general, I think everyone needs to be practical about what the actual risks are of LLM use. Are we worried about true nonsense flooding the arXiv? Or are we worried about tracking authorship when LLMs are involved? What's the actual concern?

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