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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

#41

Post by dataflow »

toast0 wrote: post #33
dataflow wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is incredibly good for science. I disagree. It's just one darn hallucinated citation for heaven's sake, not fraud or something. It doesn't account for the substance or quality of their work at all. A one-year ban seems plenty sufficient for a minor first time mistake like this. People make mistakes and a good fraction of them can learn from those mistakes. There's no need to permanently cripple someone's abili…

> It's just one darn hallucinated citation for heaven's sake, not fraud or something. It is fraud. > It doesn't account for the substance or quality of their work at all. References are part of the work. If you're making up the references, what else are you making up? > People make mistakes and a good fraction of them can learn from those mistakes. There's no need to permanently cripple someone's ability to progress…

> It is fraud.

No, it is emphatically not. Fraud requires intent to deceive.

> A one year ban is not permanent.

...what text are you reading? Nobody was calling the one-year ban permanent, or even against it. I was literally in favor of it in my comment. I explicitly said it is already plenty sufficient. What I said is there's no need to go beyond that. My entire gripe was that they very much are going beyond that with a permanent penalty. Did you completely miss where they said "...followed by the requirement that subsequent arXiv submissions must first be accepted at a reputable peer-reviewed venue"?

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

#42

Post by SchemaLoad »

squirrelon wrote: post #15

Had a colleague submit a paper with literal AI slop left in the text, got hit with a nasty revision request. Check your drafts before you submit, people. The reviewers will find it.

Sad the suggestion here is to just disguise the slop to make it harder for reviewers to spot rather than not submitting slop to begin with.

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

#43

Post by andrepd »

blazespin wrote: post #34
toast0 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's just one darn hallucinated citation for heaven's sake, not fraud or something. It is fraud. > It doesn't account for the substance or quality of their work at all. References are part of the work. If you're making up the references, what else are you making up? > People make mistakes and a good fraction of them can learn from those mistakes. There's no need to permanently cripple someone's ability to progress…

it's very silly, but not a big deal. Arxiv is becoming irrelevant these days anyways. In fact would be better if they just banned AI, so we could just get off the luddite platforms. Automated research is the future, end of story. And really it couldn't have come out at a better time, given the increasingly diminishing returns on human powered research.

Poe's law striking hard.

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

#44

Post by goolz »

dataflow wrote: post #18
btown wrote: post #4

> The penalty is a 1-year ban from arXiv followed by the requirement that subsequent arXiv submissions must first be accepted at a reputable peer-reviewed venue. This is incredibly good for science. arXiv is free, but it's a privilege not a right! I'm not seeing this clearly listed on https://info.arxiv.org/help/policies/index.html so it's possible this is planned but not live yet - or perhaps I'm not digging deeply…

> This is incredibly good for science. I disagree. It's just one darn hallucinated citation for heaven's sake, not fraud or something. It doesn't account for the substance or quality of their work at all. A one-year ban seems plenty sufficient for a minor first time mistake like this. People make mistakes and a good fraction of them can learn from those mistakes. There's no need to permanently cripple someone's abili…

If you cannot be bothered to check your references when writing academic quality papers then you have no place writing them in the first place. The punishment is not chopping off a finger, it is a polite reminder to do the bare minimum.

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

#45

Post by miki123211 »

lucb1e wrote: post #16
tengwar2 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just AI, though. I did a doctorate in physics about 40 years back, and bad references were a problem back then.

In what way? Surely something like the source not quite saying what was cited, or mixing up citations, rather than inventing them outright?

That, and mixing reference details from multiple sources and messing it up.

Let's say you read a paper on Arxiv but cite the version that was submitted to a journal or conference, without realizing that the authors made changes to the version they submitted and forgot to upload them to Arxiv.

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

#46

Post by bigstrat2003 »

dataflow wrote: post #31
wrs wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A "mistake" would be a typo in a real citation. A hallucinated citation is evidence of just plain laziness and negligence, which taints the entire submission.

No it is not. Seriously. All you need for this to happen is for your lab partner to ask AI to add a missing citation that they are already familiar with at the last minute before a midnight submission deadline, and for the AI to hallucinate something else, and for them to honestly miss this. It does not even imply any involvement on your part, let alone that either of you were lazy or negligent on the actual research…

The lack of understanding that you are responsible for the content you create, no matter what tools you use, is what's astounding.

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

#47

Post by andrepd »

dataflow wrote: post #29
patcon wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A citation is where you derived knowledge... If you haven't checked it and you are submitting something that should represent a ton of labour (and which will consume labour to review), you don't understand what you're doing. It is not just crossing T's and dotting I'd. Your being set behind is less important than the fact that your publishing is setting everyone else behind. Such a banned person is being helped to "s…

> Your being set behind is less important than the fact that your publishing is setting everyone else behind One hallucinated citation does not in any way imply anyone is being left behind. All it means nobody is checked that particular line of the manuscript after it was written. The rest of the paper could still be solid and treated accordingly. If you find evidence of the contrary, of course treat it accordingly,…

You clearly misunderstand. You cite a work in your paper because you have read that work, and build upon it or want to refer to it to back up a specific claim. Generating references is fraud period, because you are implying that you have read a work when in fact you just asked an AI "please insert some reference-shaped text here" to make it look like a proper paper. It is sadly not a necessary, but certainly a VERY sufficient, reason to conclude a paper is fraudulent.

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

#48

Post by andrepd »

dataflow wrote: post #24
ajkjk wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the kind of mistake that is possible unless you're engaging in fraud anyway.

> 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…

If you are citing a work you paste a citation to that work. If you are bullshitting you ask an AI to come up with a citation. Jesus, there is zero reason to ever "generate a citation" if you are not, in fact, commiting fraud.

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

#49

Post by andrepd »

miki123211 wrote: post #35
squirrelon wrote: post #15

Had a colleague submit a paper with literal AI slop left in the text, got hit with a nasty revision request. Check your drafts before you submit, people. The reviewers will find it.

Also check your LaTeX comments, Arxiv makes those publicly visible!!! I'm a screen reader user and usually read papers as raw TeX. I've seen everything: slurs, demeaning comments towards reviewers and professors, admissions of fraud, instructions to coauthors to commit further fraud before paper submission to mask the earlier fraud... it's all there. There's far less of it than I would think, definitely I think it wo…

https://xcancel.com/leaksph

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

#50

Post by zeusdclxvi »

dataflow wrote: post #41
toast0 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's just one darn hallucinated citation for heaven's sake, not fraud or something. It is fraud. > It doesn't account for the substance or quality of their work at all. References are part of the work. If you're making up the references, what else are you making up? > People make mistakes and a good fraction of them can learn from those mistakes. There's no need to permanently cripple someone's ability to progress…

> It is fraud. No, it is emphatically not. Fraud requires intent to deceive. > A one year ban is not permanent. ...what text are you reading? Nobody was calling the one-year ban permanent, or even against it. I was literally in favor of it in my comment. I explicitly said it is already plenty sufficient. What I said is there's no need to go beyond that. My entire gripe was that they very much are going beyond that wi…

If you are using AI-hallucinated references in scientific papers then there is some obvious intent to deceive there
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