MIT professor defends arXiv rate limits: AI killed the barrier to 50 slop papers a year
DimitrisPapail · x · 2026-10-02
MIT professor Dimitris Papailiopoulos pushes back on mathematician Peter Richtarik's anti-rate-limit argument, laying out his case for moderating arXiv submissions:
- arXiv is not Dropbox but a moderated scientific commons with finite resources — and, arguably more importantly, finite reader attention
- The research styles Richtarik lists (huge papers, big collaborations, books) all fit under 10 papers/year; a cap mainly constrains one style: being on a very large number of papers every year
- The intellectual barrier that used to make 50 plausible-looking slop papers a year impossible has disappeared with AI, so pretending no norms or infrastructure should change is stranger than rate limiting
- Producing freely is fine, he argues, but the community isn't obliged to subsidize unlimited distribution for every unit someone calls a paper
The exchange captures a growing debate over how AI-generated submissions should reshape academic publishing norms.
Related event: arXiv Submission Caps Spark Debate Over AI Paper Flood(3 posts)→
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