The business of AI: where’s the intelligence?
The two editors-in-chief, the emeritus editors, and all associate editors but one for the Elsevier scientific periodical Journal of Human Evolution have resigned. In a press release, the editors note, among other complaints, that Elsevier has eliminated the position of copy editor on the grounds that “the editors should not be paying attention to language, grammar, readability, consistency, or accuracy of proper nomenclature or formatting.” The result is that errors that were not found in the original manuscript are introduced during the production of the paper. The editors further complain about the cost of page charges and open access charges to institutions, and the relative paucity of institutions with whom Elsevier has negotiated open access agreements.
Then there’s this:
“The press release notes that, without telling anyone, Elsevier introduced artificial intelligence during some phase of production and generated articles in which proper nouns (including epochs, site names, countries, cities, and genera) were not capitalized, and genera and species were not italicized. Thus, papers that had been properly formatted became embarrassingly wrong, and it took the persistent efforts of the editors over six months to resolve the problem. The footnote concludes, “AI processing … regularly reformats submitted manuscripts to change meaning and formatting and require extensive author and editor oversight during proof stage.”
Elsevier: taking the intelligence out of artificial intelligence.
Human evolution journal editorial board resigns
Then there’s this:
“The press release notes that, without telling anyone, Elsevier introduced artificial intelligence during some phase of production and generated articles in which proper nouns (including epochs, site names, countries, cities, and genera) were not capitalized, and genera and species were not italicized. Thus, papers that had been properly formatted became embarrassingly wrong, and it took the persistent efforts of the editors over six months to resolve the problem. The footnote concludes, “AI processing … regularly reformats submitted manuscripts to change meaning and formatting and require extensive author and editor oversight during proof stage.”
Elsevier: taking the intelligence out of artificial intelligence.
Human evolution journal editorial board resigns
“AI” has always been crap and everything it touches turns to crap. It has never included any form of actual intelligence. What Elsevier is doing here is taking the intelligence out of the editorial process. If “the editors should not be paying attention to language, grammar, readability, consistency, or accuracy of proper nomenclature or formatting”, then who the hell should? Inevitably, taking that type of work away from qualified humans and assigning it to some mindless and essentially random automated process results in papers that look semiliterate. It’s no wonder everybody competent has resigned. Hopefully they can start a new journal to be run in a non-moronic way.
Why Scientific Fraud Is Suddenly Everywhere
From the link:
” . . . whether fraud accusations against the presidents of Harvard and Stanford are actually good for academia.”
To the best of my knowledge, the president of Harvard was never accused of fraud, she was accused of having failed to cite sources.
But my post wasn’t about AI and fraud, it was about AI being used by a journal to degrade the line editing process.