I wasn’t surprised to read that the field of artificial intelligence research is being overwhelmed by the same slope it started with (Artificial intelligence research has a slope problem, academics say: ‘It’s a mess’, 6 December). But it’s a bit like bears getting angry about all the mess in the forest.
This serves AI researchers a perfect service for the irresponsible innovations they spread into the world without even bothering to ask the rest of us if we wanted it.
But what about the rest of us? The problem is not limited to AI research – their slop generators have flooded other disciplines that are not responsible for this revolution. As a peer reviewer for top ethical journals, I had to point out that the submissions are AI-generated negligence. But many academic experts are not versed enough in this matter to recognize it so quickly. Nor, apparently, are they willing to immerse themselves in the “genre” to gain momentum.
This means that the process of removing the slop will slow down and the process will become blocked. AI allows the amount of waste to increase to unbearable levels so that traditional quality control mechanisms such as peer review are overwhelmed.
We are on the verge of a collapse of academic quality and standards, with the “signal” being drowned out by “noise” across the board, at which point research may face a downward spiral of bad imitations of itself, with no clear way of escape.
Those who continue to ignore this problem should not be allowed to get away with it by claiming later that they were not warned about it and could not have predicted the consequences of their neglect.
Dr. Craig Reeves
School of Law, Birkbeck, University of London
