Artificial Intelligence Is the Crisis We Need
Raising questions about the future of citation metrics and the effectiveness of peer review in a world where authorship may not solely reside with humans.
The ever-increasing number of scientific publications poses a challenge. Liang et al. (2024) suggest a growing trend of AI-assisted paper writing (nearly 20% in computer science). This raises questions about the future of citation metrics and the effectiveness of peer review in a world where authorship may not solely reside with humans.
The term ‘peer review,’ often viewed as a cornerstone of science, has a surprisingly recent origin (1969, according to Merriam-Webster). While giants like Einstein and Newton thrived without it, concerns about its limitations have been voiced. Dijkstra (EWD1018, 1987) saw peer review as potentially stifling originality.
The current emphasis on publication quantity, as Stonebraker (2018) argues, incentivizes researchers to prioritize publishable, but potentially irrelevant, work. This leads to a “diarrhea of papers” that may not address critical problems.
