[ExI] Arxiv and AI slop

[John Clark]

On Fri, Apr 10, 2026 at 5:25 AM BillK via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

*> One response is to fight fire with fire
> <https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-02469-y> by using AI in peer
> review or to weed out fake papers.*


*I'm not sure I understand how that could work. It seems to me the
important thing is not in determining if a paper was written by an AI or a
human, it's in determining if the paper is any good; or when it comes to
stuff that has not yet been peer reviewed, at least a 10% chance that the
paper will turn out to be pretty good. I don't suppose it would take a very
advanced AI to weed out papers that contained obvious logical blunders, or
those that go on and on about the properties of magical crystals from
Atlantis and other such nonsense. *

* John K Clark*






On Fri, 10 Apr 2026 at 05:27, Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> > In my recent experience posting to arxiv.org is not what it used to be.
> It is now heavily moderated and restricted. One paper I submitted sat in an
> on hold status for over a month before it was rejected without any
> feedback, and without any ability to appeal or resubmit.
> >
> > I have since found a truly open eprint archive which hosts up to 50 GB
> of papers, assigns DOI numbers, and publishes immediately:
> > zenodo.org
> > It is run by CERN. I submitted three papers there recently and it is
> what arxiv used to be: a place to post papers without gatekeeping.
> >
> > Jason
> > _______________________________________________
>
>
> Arxiv has been flooded with AI-generated (slop) papers. Controlling this
> has forced them into more strict moderation.
> Zenodo and other preprint servers are facing the same problem.
> BillK
>
> See: <
> https://www.science.org/content/article/arxiv-preprint-server-clamps-down-ai-slop
> >
> and <
> https://sciencesprings.wordpress.com/2026/02/16/from-nature-how-ai-slop-is-causing-a-crisis-in-computer-science/
> >
> Quote:
>
> One response is to fight fire with fire
> <https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-02469-y> by using AI in peer
> review or to weed out fake papers. Other options are blunter. The arXiv
> has, for example, added eligibility checks for first-time submitters and banned
> computer-science review articles
> <https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-03664-7> that have not been
> previously accepted by a peer-reviewed outlet. The organizers of the
> International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence (“IJCAI”),
> meanwhile, have sought to limit submissions by introducing a policy that
> requires researchers to pay US$100 for every subsequent paper after their
> first. These payments then get distributed between reviewers.
>
> The stakes are high, says Lee. If the issue is not addressed, “trust in
> scientific research, particularly within computer science, faces a
> substantial risk of erosion”, he says.
>
>
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