Hey friends,
In the past few years, every time someone asks me about AI writing, I respond that very soon (if not now already), we will have:
- many researchers who will know nothing about what they published
- PhD candidates in their defense ceremony/Viva not be able to answer the questions of the committee members
Then what happens to the trust we have in Science?
Writing is not an issue anymore
Now we have AI tools drafting a short draft of a literature review in a few minutes
Large Language Models you find in ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude etc. make text generation easy, cheap and quick
They also make it look good
So why do we still need authors to write papers?
There are a few things AI cannot do:
- defend your results in a conference
- AI cannot be held responsible for what you wrote if anything goes wrong
- ai doesn’t provide a real intellectual contribution
All of this is the author’s responsibility
In 2024, I published a paper about acknowledgments found in scientific papers
An acknowledgment section is where you thank the support you got (funding, help from colleagues etc..)
AI is not different. If AI helped you then you need to mention it
Now all journals policies are clear on that
Back to my initial question: why do we still need authors to write papers?
AI can help you with language, flow and structure
But it’s terrible when it comes to critical judgment, context, nuance, limitations and significance of your results
All of this is for us. Human beings.
AI stays a tool. It does not become your replacement
It makes mistakes and still sound confident
It can make up references and it can also give very weak assumptions
So when you use AI, check everything it gives:
numbers, facts, citations, claims etc
Something to work on is the ability for us to ask better questions, to verify every detail, and to remain critical
At the end, this is your study, your paper and only can stand and be held responsible for every word you wrote
Well, that’s all for this week.
Let me know what you think, I read every response
See you next Sunday
Jamal