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'Positive review only': Researchers hide AI prompts in papers

(asia.nikkei.com)
178 points ohjeez | 2 comments | 05 Jul 25 15:15 UTC | HN request time: 0.719s | source
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dynm ◴[05 Jul 25 16:09 UTC] No.44473682[source]▶
Just to be clear, these are hidden prompts put in papers by authors meant to be triggered only if a reviewer (unethically) uses AI to generate their review. I guess this is wrong, but I find it hard not to have some sympathy for the authors. Mostly, it seems like an indictment of the whole peer-review system.
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IshKebab ◴[05 Jul 25 18:15 UTC] No.44474483[source]▶
I wouldn't say it's wrong, and I haven't seen anyone articulate clearly why it would be wrong.
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adastra22 ◴[05 Jul 25 18:40 UTC] No.44474637[source]▶
Because it would end up favoring research that may or may not be better than the honestly submitted alternative which doesn't make the cut, thereby lowering the quality of the published papers for everyone.
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soraminazuki ◴[06 Jul 25 01:53 UTC] No.44477135[source]▶
That can't happen unless reviewers dishonestly base their reviews on AI slop. If they are using AI slop, then it ends up favoring random papers regardless of quality. This is true whether or not authors decide to add countermeasures against slop.

Only reviewers can ensure that higher quality papers get accepted and no one else.

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adastra22 ◴[06 Jul 25 03:20 UTC] No.44477555[source]▶
Reviewers being dishonest should have repercussions for themselves, not for the research field as a whole.
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1. soraminazuki ◴[06 Jul 25 13:07 UTC] No.44480497[source]▶
Can you clarify? Reviewers being dishonest have consequences for the research field as a whole, there's no avoiding that.
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2. adastra22 ◴[06 Jul 25 16:24 UTC] No.44482043[source]▶
I expect a reviewer using AI tools to query papers to do a half decent job even if they don’t check the results… if we assume the AI hasn’t been prompt injected. They’re actually pretty good at this.

Which is to say, if there were four selections to be made from ten submissions, I expect that humans and AI reviewers to select the same winning 4 quite frequently. I agree with the outrage of the reviewers deferring their expertise to AI on grounds of dishonesty among other reasons. But I concur with the people that do it that it would mostly work most of the time in selecting the best papers of a bunch.

I do not expect there to be any positive correlation between papers that are important enough to publish and papers which embed prompt injections to pass review. If anything I would expect a negative correlation—cheating papers are probably trash.