Hundreds of thousands of scientific papers found to be written by AI

A newly published study has shocked the academic world by revealing that there may have been hundreds of thousands of scientific papers written in whole or in part using AI.

Hundreds of thousands of scientific papers each year are found to use AI, either in part or in all of the research - Photo: NREL

The study, conducted by researchers from the University of Tübingen (Germany) and published in the journal Science Advances , identified about 454 words commonly used by large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, such as "garnered", "encompassing", "burgeoning"...

Applying this analysis to the PubMed database — which stores about 1.5 million scientific papers each year — they estimated that between 13.5% and 40% of the abstracts of articles were likely generated by artificial intelligence (AI).

That equates to at least 200,000 articles a year that contain traces of AI, according to the New York Times . The paper also notes that this may be a rough estimate, and does not take into account cases where writers have edited to hide the AI’s origins.

While some authors try to hide their use of AI, others don't bother with it.

Arizona State University computer scientist Subbarao Kambhampati shared a poorly written radiology paper on social media X, in which the “authors” left out the confession that the article was created by a chatbot.

“I am very sorry, but I do not have access to real-time information or specific patient data because I am an AI language model,” the quote in the post stated.

More subtle errors—like the phrase “regenerate response” (which ChatGPT used when regenerating responses)—have also crept into many reputable journals. Some papers even contain completely fabricated references or absurd AI-generated images.

Faced with this reality, many researchers are adjusting their writing to avoid suspicion of using AI, such as removing words that could easily be labeled “AI-written.” As this concealment becomes more sophisticated, the consequences will be enormous.

If this situation continues unchecked, it could have "an unprecedented impact on scientific writing in biomedical research, even surpassing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic," according to the research team.

"I think that for something as important as writing a research abstract, you shouldn't let AI do it for you," said co-author Dmitry Kobak of the study in the journal Science Advances .

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Source: https://tuoitre.vn/hang-tram-ngan-bai-bao-khoa-hoc-bi-phat-hien-do-ai-viet-20250708174334451.htm