[dataflow]

> 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 you think they must be committing fraud is insane.

[mixtureoftakes]

if you're not checking citations in the paper youre publishing AND trusting a non SOTA, hallucination prone ai model to come up with sources for it, its probably for the best of everyone that this paper isn't published.

yes there will be rare exceptions but in general i feel like this is a really good addition.

[flexagoon]

> non SOTA, hallucination prone ai model

What SOTA models are not hallucination prone?

[asdff]

Why would you ask the ai to find a citation you know exists? Just reach for that citation.

[BonoboIO]

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 this as if it were some understandable workflow mistake. At that point it is simply slop with academic formatting. Post it on a blog or somewhere else, but do not put it into the scientific record.

A one-year ban is not a lifetime ban. Maybe six months would also have been enough, but the author can use that time to think about whether they should verify references next time — and to manually check every other citation.

[dataflow]

> 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

[andrepd]

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.

[fc417fc802]

That's like saying that there's zero reason to ever ask an LLM to do basic math for you. Sure you probably shouldn't do that but sometimes it's convenient and so people will inevitably do exactly that regardless of the somewhat frequent wrong answers that are guaranteed to ensue.

[skydhash]

Fraud are always about the convenience of the perpetrator.

[galaxyLogic]

I much agree. But I wonder shouldn't the citations all be hyperlinks and thus easy to verify?

[no-name-here]

How specific are the citations? If it's “Sentence 4 on page 97 supports” or “Paper says ‘___’” then I imagine it would be fairly easy. If it's “(__ page long) paper supports x”, then very difficult?

[toofy]

if an llm does the work, you did not write it or research it, the llm did. you have no business crediting yourself as an author.

if someone writes a paper and an entirely different person takes credit for it without even bothering to check if the actual writer just made shit up, they deserve a lifetime ban. seems like a year is a very light punishment.

[BonoboIO]

I would not necessarily go as far as calling it fraud, but if you cannot even verify that the reference you are citing actually exists, you are not ready to publish research papers.

Deadlines are not an excuse here. Checking whether a cited book, paper, or passage exists is the absolute minimum standard for scientific work, not an optional extra. I have written academic papers myself, and I find it astonishing that people are trying to justify this as if it were some understandable workflow mistake. At that point it is simply slop with academic formatting.

A one-year ban is not a lifetime ban. Maybe six months would also have been enough, but the point is that the author gets time to think about whether they should verify references next time. They can also use that time to manually check every other citation.

[ajkjk]

Yes, having AI write something and not checking it yourself is sure to lead to hallucination, hence, it is a fraudulent way to write.

[protocolture]

>Seriously? You can't fathom an honest researcher asking for AI to find a citation they know exists

Assumptions:

1. The entire document is loaded into an AI editor

2. The researcher is asking an AI editor to work on his references

3. The researcher has not checked his own references.

This could be avoided at 1, 2 or 3. But even just 1 implies that the researcher knows that they have a hot potato and might critically fuck up and lose all credibility. Being in that scenario and committing to 2 and 3 is at least extreme negligence.

[brazzy]

> 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?

Indeed I cannot. If you do that, you are not, in fact, an honest researcher. You're a lazy hack.