Economists debate: does it matter if a good referee report was AI-written?
paulnovosad · x · 2026-10-22
Economist Barbara Biasi sparked a debate on AI in peer review: if a referee report is detected as 100% AI-written, either it's obvious slop (no detector needed) or it actually reads well and makes good points — in which case, does it matter? The goal of a report is to improve the paper. Paul Novosad countered that widespread AI slop from authors and referees makes suspicion rational: if nobody used AI to dodge refereeing duties, there'd be no problem.
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