[Reading Science] "Fake Papers Rampant"... 60% of Scientists Oppose 'ChatGPT Papers'

Survey Results of International Academic Journal Nature

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Bong-su] With the emergence of the artificial intelligence (AI) ChatGPT that writes research papers on its own, significant opposition and concerns have arisen among scientists.

The international academic journal Nature recently conducted a survey of about 3,600 online subscribers regarding whether to allow AI such as ChatGPT to assist in writing research papers. On the 26th, it revealed that a majority of 57.7% (2,085 people) opposed it, while only 36.9% (1,335 people) supported it. The remaining 193 people (5.7%) chose other options.

Nature stated, "Many respondents were concerned that chatbots could easily produce fake and inaccurate papers," adding, "It is considered best to prohibit (the use of chatbots) until systems capable of detecting such types of fraud are developed."

Experts analyze that the industrial foundation may inevitably change due to ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence (AI) with excellent self-learning ability (virtual image). Photo by Yonhap News Agency

However, there were also positive opinions that proper use of AI could increase accessibility to research results. For example, it could help researchers who do not know English at all to write or summarize papers. Nature quoted a scientist saying, "AI systems should be used to accelerate research tasks that human scientists have to spend a long time on without noticeable progress." It also introduced a sentence written by ChatGPT: "The relationship between humans and AI is not competition but partnership."

This movement is also strong in the research and academic paper publishing world. In an article dated the 18th, Nature reported, "Publishers and preprint sites contacted agreed that ChatGPT does not meet the criteria for authorship of research papers because AIs cannot take responsibility for the research content and integrity." However, it added, "Some publishers responded that AI contributions to paper writing might be recognized in other areas instead of the author list."

ChatGPT is a prototype conversational AI chatbot developed by OpenAI, based in California, USA, on December 1 last year. Recently, ChatGPT has attracted attention by demonstrating outstanding abilities, such as passing medical and MBA exams and passing plagiarism checks on preprint sites.