Economists call for zero tolerance on AI-written papers: reject, retract, and ban authors

paulnovosad · x · 2026-09-25

Paul Novosad argues journals should adopt a zero-tolerance policy on AI writing. Seth Lazar's concrete proposal: any paper found substantially AI-written gets rejected or retracted, with the author permanently banned from the venue. "You might have beaten Pangram v4, but can you be sure you'll beat v5? Would you stake your reputation on it?" Novosad warns that justified exceptions would be swamped by an avalanche of slop that demoralizes referees and kills journals—the bad money drives out the good.

Related event: Economist Paul Novosad calls for zero tolerance of AI-written papers, sparking debate on academic publishing(11 posts)→

Original post →

More from Safety

Safety channel →