Economist Novosad Says He Will Refuse to Review GenAI Papers, Calls for Separating AI and Human Writing

Paul Novosad, an economics professor at Dartmouth, publicly declared that he will no longer review papers that read like they were written by AI, after accepting a review invitation from a top journal in his field and finding the submission疑似 AI-generated. He followed up with a lengthy thread of tweets laying out his critique of GenAI papers, with the core argument that AI writing and human writing should be kept in separate spaces. Alex Tabarrok echoed his views.

Confirmed

• On October 3, Novosad said he had received a review invitation from a top journal, found the paper疑似 AI-generated, and announced he would reject any paper that reads like AI wrote it; he noted that many people in the comments actually enjoy reading AI-generated text, but said he can't stand it.
• In a long thread on October 5, Novosad argued that academic success comes from two things—doing great, important work, and/or packaging that work in a way that maximizes success; some academic "superstars" are clearly far stronger at packaging than at research quality itself.
• He criticized that most GenAI papers don't start from an author with a good idea to express; instead, lacking good ideas, they are dressed up in overblown academic jargon and an "AI-style precision" prose to make them look like good ideas, calling reviewing GenAI papers the most frustrating task and vowing to refuse such reviews going forward.
• He compared GenAI papers to the critical-theory paper at the heart of the 1996 Sokal affair: dense in rhetoric and jargon, hollow at the core; AI happens to be better at packaging than substance.
• He argued that AI writing and human writing cannot coexist in the same space—wherever AI writing is allowed, it drives out human writing—so a dedicated, segregated space should be created for AI writing to develop, while keeping AI writing out of spaces for human writing.
• In discussion with Tabarrok, Novosad went further: even if economics research were eventually done entirely by AI, its best form might still be in AI's own format, kept separate from the space where human scholars write.
• Tabarrok responded that the problem with writing in the AI era is not good-idea authors using AI to express themselves, but that most authors lack good ideas and merely use AI-style, over-precise terminology and prose to package mediocre ideas as good ones.

Why it matters

• The debate touches on foundational rules for academic publishing in the GenAI era: whether reviewers should reject papers suspected of being AI-ghostwritten, and how academia defines the boundary between human and AI writing.
• Novosad's "separate spaces" proposal offers an alternative governance approach to AI's role in research—not banning AI research itself, but separating it from the space of human academic writing, which could shape future journal policies and debates over academic norms.

2026-10-03 ~ 2026-10-05 · 7 related posts

Full story(2 episodes)→

• Episode 1: Economist Calls for Zero Tolerance of AI Writing in Journals, Sparking Academic Debate(2026-09-24, 12 posts)
• Episode 2: Economist Novosad Says He Will Refuse to Review GenAI Papers, Calls for Separating AI and Human Writing(2026-10-03, 7 posts)

• [source] Top economist says he'd decline to review papers that read like AI wrote them — paulnovosad · 2026-10-03
• Academic 'superstars' are often better at packaging than at doing the work — paulnovosad · 2026-10-05
• GenAI papers echo the 1996 Sokal affair: thick on style, empty underneath — paulnovosad · 2026-10-05
• [source] "I will refuse to review GenAI papers": Novosad on style over substance — paulnovosad · 2026-10-05
• [source] Economist Novosad: AI writing drives out human writing — we need segregated spaces — paulnovosad · 2026-10-05
• Economist Tabarrok: AI writing lets bad ideas hide behind precision jargon — ATabarrok · 2026-10-05
• Economists Debate Whether AI Will Do Economic Research in Its Own Format — paulnovosad · 2026-10-05