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ChatGPT Can’t Be Credited as an Author on Research Papers
ChatGPT可以是“作者”？学术期刊说不

Springer Nature, the world’s largest academic publisher, has clarified its policies on the use of AI writing tools in scientific papers.The company announced this week that software like ChatGPT can’t be credited as an author in papers published in its thousands of journals.

However, Springer says it has no problem with scientists using AI to help write or generate ideas for research, as long as this contribution is properly disclosed by the authors.

“We felt compelled to clarify our position: for our authors, for our editors, and for ourselves,” Magdalena Skipper, editor-in-chief of Springer Nature’s flagship publication, Nature, tells us.“This new generation of LLM tools — including ChatGPT — has really exploded into the community, which is rightly excited and playing with them, but also using them in ways that go beyond how they can genuinely be used at present.”

ChatGPT and earlier large language models (LLMs) have already been named as authors in a small number of published papers, preprints, and scientific articles.

Reaction in the scientific community to papers crediting ChatGPT as an author has been predominantly negative, with social media users calling the decision in the USMLE case “absurd,” “silly,” and “deeply stupid.”

Arguments against giving AI authorship are that software simply can’t fulfill the required duties, as Skipper and Springer Nature explain.“When we think of authorship of scientific papers, of research papers, we don’t just think about writing them,” says Skipper.“There are responsibilities that extend beyond publication, and certainly at the moment these AI tools are not capable of assuming those responsibilities.”

Software cannot be meaningfully accountable for a publication, it cannot claim intellectual property rights for its work, and it cannot correspond with other scientists and the press to explain and answer questions on its work.

If there is broad consensus on crediting AI as an author, though, there is less clarity on the use of AI tools to write a paper, even with proper acknowledgment.This is in part due to well-documented problems with the output of these tools.

AI writing software can amplify social biases and has a tendency to produce “plausible bullshit” — incorrect information presented as fact.(See, for example, CNET’s recent use of AI tools to write articles.The publication later found errors in more than half of those published.)

It’s because of issues like these that some organizations have banned ChatGPT, including schools, colleges, and sites that depend on sharing reliable information, like programming Q&A repository Stack Overflow.

Earlier this month, a top academic conference on machine learning banned the use of all AI tools to write papers, though it did say authors could use such software to “polish” and “edit” their work.Exactly where one draws the line between writing and editing is tricky, but for Springer Nature, this use case is also acceptable.

“Our policy is quite clear on this: we don’t prohibit their use as a tool in writing a paper,” Skipper tells us.“What’s fundamental is that there is clarity.About how a paper is put together and what software is used.We need transparency, as that lies at the very heart of how science should be done and communicated.”