- nexa - server-nexa.polito.it

fake journal papers

by Alberto Cammozzo

Questa mattina alla rassegna stampa di radio 3 un ascoltatore che si definiva un fisico dava come abituale nel suo ambiente l'uso di chatGPT nel 'supporto' alla generazione di paper scientifici. Discutendo la cosa un amico mi ha segnalato questo apparentemente diffuso fenomeno dei 'paper mills': <https://sciencebusiness.net/news/us-lawmakers-turn-attention-plague-fake-jo…> (lo riporto di seguito) L'articolo e' datato ma non credo che nel frattempo i numeri dei paper fasulli sia calato. Forse con chatGPT i paper mills andranno in rovina: perché pagare? Alberto -- US lawmakers turn attention to plague of fake journal papers 26 Jul 2022 AI tools are now allowing so-called paper mills to trick journals with fake articles on an industrial scale. The issue risks scientific integrity and is beginning to get high level political attention US lawmakers have warned that fake research papers risk compromising trust in the entire scientific system, as artificial intelligence (AI) makes it ever easier for so-called paper mills to fool journals into accepting made up articles. Some estimates suggest hundreds of thousands of fake papers could exist in the human genomics literature alone. Paper mills have also managed to impersonate guest journal editors to wave through hundreds of their own fraudulent articles. “The automation arms race is upon us,” warned <https://science.house.gov/imo/media/doc/chair_foster_os_publishing.pdf> Democrat congressman Bill Foster in a hearing of the US House of Representatives’ science, space and technology committee last week. To prove his point, Foster, along with another representative, created a fake nuclear physics paper <https://science.house.gov/download/fake-foster-paper> using a text generator that easily evaded plagiarism detectors. “The creation of hundreds of papers – complete with figures and citations – becomes the work of an afternoon, much to the disgust of real scientists who might spend months on a single paper,” said Foster. Fraud in scientific work will undermine honest academics’ work, and could have “disastrous” effects if it ends up influencing policy or public behaviour, warned <https://science.house.gov/imo/media/doc/chairwoman_johnson_os_publishing.pdf> congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, who chairs the committee. Concern around paper mills has existed for at least a decade, but improvements in AI image and text generation have made fake paper production possible on an industrial scale. Now, with last week’s congressional hearing, there is high level political attention focused on what it could do to the scientific system. “This is the first time the US Congress has been interested,” said Chris Graf, research integrity director at scientific publisher Springer Nature, and one of those who testified at the hearing, told Science|Business. Paper mills use AI tools to create realistic-seeming papers that are submitted to journals, normally many at a time. They then sell authorship spots on those journals to academics willing to pay for authorship. This might then earn the academic a bonus or promotion. One Latvia-based paper mill uncovered by a publishers’ report <https://publicationethics.org/files/paper-mills-cope-stm-research-report.pdf> last month claims to have sold close to 13,000 articles into real journals. But Graf said publishers often didn’t know where the mills were based because they conceal their locations. As for the mills’ customers – academics willing to pay for a fake authorship credit – they tend to be based in Asia, Graf said. “The majority of the authors whose papers I know about […] are in China,” he said. “A proportion them are also in India.” Graf, who is one of the leaders of a publishers’ effort to better detect paper mills, said he is angry with the mills, not the academics themselves. These academics – often busy clinicians - may be trapped in a system that demands they publish internationally but without the time, resources, or English language skills to do so honestly, he said. *Fooling journals* In some fields, research is so specialised that journal peer reviewers simply cannot spot when a paper is fake. In human genetics, sometimes there are no expert communities for particular genes, said Jennifer Byrne, an oncology professor at the University of Sydney, another expert who testified last week. “If the manuscript looks plausible, for example by including the expected types of images and nucleotide sequence reagents, they may accept the manuscript, even though they don’t know whether the results describe represent a genuine advance in knowledge,” she said. Bryne and colleagues recently screened around 12,000 human genomics papers, and found <https://science.house.gov/imo/media/doc/Byrne%20Testimony.pdf> over 700 contained errors indicating they could originate from a paper mill. “The threat of paper mills to scientific publishing and integrity has no parallel over my 30-year scientific career,” she said in her testimony <https://science.house.gov/imo/media/doc/Byrne%20Testimony.pdf>. Another paper mill technique relies on full-scale identity fraud. Journals often use outside guest editors to oversee niche editions, said Graf. In one case, however, a journal was contacted by a paper mill pretending to be a specialist guest editor, using a very similar email address to the academic they were impersonating. This fake guest editor then waved through hundreds of articles from the paper mill before the journal realised what was happening and retracted the articles, Graf said. “We realised the journal had been hacked, effectively.” Paper mills have also targeted pre-print servers. These publish articles online prior to peer review, and became increasingly important during the pandemic, when scientists couldn’t wait for publication to get their results out. ArXiv, a popular pre-print server, has received fake papers for some time, said Steinn Sigurdsson, scientific director. “It is a bit of a ‘Red Queen Race’ as computer technology and algorithms improve and the fakes become ‘deeper’,” he said, referring to a situation where more and more work is required just to stay in the same place. “arXiv uses a combination of human moderators who do mostly quick screens of submissions, and a hierarchy of software tools that run both synchronously with submission and asynchronously offline to detect submissions with errors or problems, and outliers of various sorts,” he explained. *Scale unclear* Exactly how many fake papers lurk in the scientific literature is unclear. In the publishers’ report last month, called /Paper Mills/ <https://publicationethics.org/files/paper-mills-cope-stm-research-report.pdf>, estimates varied widely. At most journals, just 2% of submissions are from paper mills, it found. But when a paper mill finds a journal that takes its papers, it appears to bombard it with manuscripts. At some targeted journals, nearly half of submissions are from paper mills, it found. One unnamed publisher cited in the report discovered that between 2019 - 21, they had published more than 450 paper mill articles. Publishers have faced criticism of inaction when issues are flagged up, either due to paper mill fakery or other forms of misconduct. “Journal and institutional responses remain, on average, very ineffective and inefficient, even when evident problems have been made public,” US lawmakers were told <https://science.house.gov/imo/media/doc/Stell%20Testimony.pdf> by Brandon Stell, co-founder of the PubPeer site, which allows anonymous commentators to pick apart problems in papers. It’s also unclear to what extent fake papers in the literature will actually steer science down blind alleys. Graf thinks that researchers are on the whole able to spot them. “They know what’s rubbish, and they know what’s trustworthy,” he said. *Taking action* Still, the existence of fake paper mill articles has rattled publishers, said Graf. “Publishers care a lot about this,” he said. “It goes straight to the heart of the thing we call our value proposition.” Last December, the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers, set up an Integrity Hub, which they will use to share data on simultaneous submission of papers to several journals, which can be a sign that a paper mill is behind them. Graf predicted a spike in retractions due to increasing paper mill fraud. “Maybe we’re at the start of that spike for retractions for paper mill type work,” he said.

March 30, 2023

The problem with artificial intelligence? It’s not artificial or intelligent

by Enrico Nardelli

The problem with artificial intelligence? It’s not artificial or intelligent Evgeny Morozov https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/30/artificial-intelligen… -- sent from mobile, please forgive typos and conciseness =================== Prof. Enrico Nardelli Univ. Roma Tor Vergata ===================

March 30, 2023

Re: [nexa] Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter

by J.C. DE MARTIN

*A misleading open letter about sci-fi AI dangers ignores the real risks** */Misinformation, labor impact, and safety are all risks. But not in the way the letter implies.// /Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor https://aisnakeoil.substack.com/p/a-misleading-open-letter-about-sci On 29/03/23 08:47, J.C. DE MARTIN wrote: > Primi firmatari: Yoshua Bengio, Stuart Russell, Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak. > > jc* > > Pause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter** > * > /We call on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the > training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4. > / > > https://futureoflife.org/open-letter/pause-giant-ai-experiments/ > > AI systems with human-competitive intelligence can pose profound risks > to society and humanity, as shown by extensive research^[1] and > acknowledged by top AI labs.^[2] As stated in the widely-endorsed > Asilomar AI Principles > <https://futureoflife.org/open-letter/ai-principles/>, /Advanced AI > could represent a profound change in the history of life on Earth, and > should be planned for and managed with commensurate care and > resources/. Unfortunately, this level of planning and management is > not happening, even though recent months have seen AI labs locked in > an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful > digital minds that no one – not even their creators – can understand, > predict, or reliably control. > > Contemporary AI systems are now becoming human-competitive at general > tasks,^[3] and we must ask ourselves: /Should/ we let machines flood > our information channels with propaganda and untruth? /Should/ we > automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones? /Should/ we > develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, > outsmart, obsolete and replace us? /Should/ we risk loss of control of > our civilization? Such decisions must not be delegated to unelected > tech leaders. *Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we > are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will > be manageable.* This confidence must be well justified and increase > with the magnitude of a system's potential effects. OpenAI's recent > statement regarding artificial general intelligence > <https://openai.com/blog/planning-for-agi-and-beyond>, states that > /"At some point, it may be important to get independent review before > starting to train future systems, and for the most advanced efforts to > agree to limit the rate of growth of compute used for creating new > models."/ We agree. That point is now. > > Therefore, *we call on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 > months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4*. This > pause should be public and verifiable, and include all key actors. If > such a pause cannot be enacted quickly, governments should step in and > institute a moratorium. > > AI labs and independent experts should use this pause to jointly > develop and implement a set of shared safety protocols for advanced AI > design and development that are rigorously audited and overseen by > independent outside experts. These protocols should ensure that > systems adhering to them are safe beyond a reasonable doubt.^[4] This > does /not/ mean a pause on AI development in general, merely a > stepping back from the dangerous race to ever-larger unpredictable > black-box models with emergent capabilities. > > AI research and development should be refocused on making today's > powerful, state-of-the-art systems more accurate, safe, interpretable, > transparent, robust, aligned, trustworthy, and loyal. > > In parallel, AI developers must work with policymakers to dramatically > accelerate development of robust AI governance systems. These should > at a minimum include: new and capable regulatory authorities dedicated > to AI; oversight and tracking of highly capable AI systems and large > pools of computational capability; provenance and watermarking systems > to help distinguish real from synthetic and to track model leaks; a > robust auditing and certification ecosystem; liability for AI-caused > harm; robust public funding for technical AI safety research; and > well-resourced institutions for coping with the dramatic economic and > political disruptions (especially to democracy) that AI will cause. > > Humanity can enjoy a flourishing future with AI. Having succeeded in > creating powerful AI systems, we can now enjoy an "AI summer" in which > we reap the rewards, engineer these systems for the clear benefit of > all, and give society a chance to adapt. Society has hit pause on > other technologies with potentially catastrophic effects on > society.^[5] We can do so here. Let's enjoy a long AI summer, not > rush unprepared into a fall. > > > > _______________________________________________ > nexa mailing list > nexa(a)server-nexa.polito.it > https://server-nexa.polito.it/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nexa

March 30, 2023

Re: [nexa] Riparte l'Intergruppo Innovazione del Parlamento italiano

by Stefano Quintarelli

quello era una cosa diversa l'intergruppo innovazione e' nato nella XVII legislatura (non trattava solo di web) On 29/03/23 18:43, M. Fioretti wrote: > On Wed, Mar 29, 2023 17:31:01 PM +0200, Luigi Scorca wrote: >> Segnalo a tutti. >> https://formiche.net/2023/03/nuovo-intergruppo-innovazione/ >> > > Fico. Speriamo duri e concluda piu' del primo: > > https://stop.zona-m.net/it/2013/01/elezioni-2013-tornera-lintergruppo-2-0/ > > Sarebbe interessante chiedere a ognuno dei membri se lo sanno, che il > loro gruppo non e' il primo del genere. > > Marco

March 29, 2023

"We Must Sustain America’s Big Tech Engines of Innovation"

by J.C. DE MARTIN

/In today’s “voraciously competitive” digital world, breaking up Big Tech companies could trigger unintended damage to America’s quest to remain the world’s leader in new technologies, write Venky Narayanamurti and Steven Currall.// / Taaaaaaac (scusate, non ho resistito...) jc *We Must Sustain America’s Big Tech Engines of Innovation** * Authors: Venkatesh "Venky" Narayanamurti Steven C. Currall Mar. 24, 2023 https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/we-must-sustain-americas-big-tech-…

March 29, 2023

Il capitalismo dei monopoli intellettuali e l'editoria della sorveglianza.

by Antonio

Segnalo la recente pubblicazione della tesi di Camilla Franch (relatore Roberto Caso) dal titolo: "Il capitalismo dei monopoli intellettuali e l'editoria della sorveglianza. Un'analisi delle politiche europee sull'open science e sulla regolazione dei dati". link (open access): https://lawtech.jus.unitn.it/publications/pubblicato-il-n-86-della-serie-de… A.

March 29, 2023

Re: [nexa] Riparte l'Intergruppo Innovazione del Parlamento italiano

by M. Fioretti

On Wed, Mar 29, 2023 17:31:01 PM +0200, Luigi Scorca wrote: > Segnalo a tutti. > https://formiche.net/2023/03/nuovo-intergruppo-innovazione/ > Fico. Speriamo duri e concluda piu' del primo: https://stop.zona-m.net/it/2013/01/elezioni-2013-tornera-lintergruppo-2-0/ Sarebbe interessante chiedere a ognuno dei membri se lo sanno, che il loro gruppo non e' il primo del genere. Marco -- Vi aspetto tutti su substack: https://mfioretti.substack.com

March 29, 2023

Riparte l'Intergruppo Innovazione del Parlamento italiano

by Luigi Scorca

Segnalo a tutti. https://formiche.net/2023/03/nuovo-intergruppo-innovazione/ A presto, Luigi

March 29, 2023

Re: [nexa] Nuova proposta di legge nel Congresso USA

by Enrico Nardelli

Grazie Juan Carlos, se ho capito bene seguendo un po' la faccenda da vari interventi su Twitter, la proposta rischia di dare al governo un potere censorio enorme. Ma non escludo di aver capito male o di aver letto solo una campana... Ciao, Enrico Il 29/03/2023 08:12, J.C. DE MARTIN ha scritto: > Credo che valga la pena leggere questa proposta di legge per capire in che direzione sta andando (o quantomeno rischia di andare) quella parte del mondo, noi inclusi, che ama considerarsi libera per quanto riguarda il digitale. > > jc > > 118TH CONGRESS 1ST SESSION > S. 686 > To authorize the Secretary of Commerce to review and prohibit certain trans- actions between persons in the United States and foreign adversaries, and for other purposes. > > IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES > > MARCH 7, 2023 > > Mr. WARNER (for himself, Mr. THUNE, Ms. BALDWIN, Mrs. FISCHER, Mr. MANCHIN, Mr. MORAN, Mr. BENNET, Mr. SULLIVAN, Mrs. GILLIBRAND, Ms. COLLINS, Mr. HEINRICH, Mr. ROMNEY, and Mrs. CAPITO) intro- duced the following bill; which was read twice and referred to the Com- mittee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation > > This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology Act’’ or the ‘‘RESTRICT Act’’. > > Vedere: https://www.congress.gov/118/bills/s686/BILLS-118s686is.pdf > > _______________________________________________ > nexa mailing list > nexa(a)server-nexa.polito.it > https://server-nexa.polito.it/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nexa -- -- EN https://www.hoepli.it/libro/la-rivoluzione-informatica/9788896069516.html ====================================================== Prof. Enrico Nardelli Presidente di "Informatics Europe" Direttore del Laboratorio Nazionale "Informatica e Scuola" del CINI Dipartimento di Matematica - Università di Roma "Tor Vergata" Via della Ricerca Scientifica snc - 00133 Roma home page: https://www.mat.uniroma2.it/~nardelli blog: https://link-and-think.blogspot.it/ tel: +39 06 7259.4204 fax: +39 06 7259.4699 mobile: +39 335 590.2331 e-mail: nardelli(a)mat.uniroma2.it online meeting: https://blue.meet.garr.it/b/enr-y7f-t0q-ont ====================================================== --

March 29, 2023

Justice Department and Meta Platforms Inc. Reach Key Agreement (US Department of Justice press release)

by Antonio Vetro'

Justice Department and Meta Platforms Inc. Reach Key Agreement as They Implement Groundbreaking Resolution to Address Discriminatory Delivery of Housing Advertisements The Justice Department announced today that it has reached a key milestone in its settlement agreement with Meta Platforms Inc. (Meta) formerly known as Facebook Inc. requiring Meta to change its advertisement delivery system to prevent discriminatory advertising in violation of the Fair Housing Act (FHA). As required by the settlement entered on June 27 2022 resolving a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York Meta has now built a new system to address algorithmic discrimination. Continua su: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-and-meta-platforms-inc-re… Un caso che si trascina da qualche anno, e che è giunto a una decisione due mesi fa. Il tempo dirà se si è trattato di un compromesso facilmente aggirabile da Meta oppure no. A.

March 29, 2023