8 ms·
2% of ICML papers desk rejected because the authors used LLM in their reviews
- michaelbuckbee 6mo agoWorth reading for the discussion of the LLM watermark technique alone.
- pppoe 6mo agoI really like how they approach to the detection. But I am worried that this is something the community can only use effectively once. There are too many ways to bypass this detection once you know how it works.
- mijoharas 6mo agoOne thing to note. They were quite conservative in their approach, so the only things that were rejected were from people who had agreed not to use an LLM and almost definitely did use an LLM (since they fed hidden watermarked instructions to the llm's). This means the true number of people that used LLM's in their review (even in group A that had agreed not to) is likely higher. Also worth noting, 10% of these authors used them in more than half of their reviews.
- grey-area 6mo agoYes for those in group B I'd suspect many were doing exactly what these cheaters in group A were doing - submitting the unaltered output of an LLM as their review.
- kombookcha 6mo agoThe rejection is based on the dishonesty of explicitly committing to standard A and then knowingly violating it, not on LLM use as such. I think that's pretty fair, considering that everyone could have just chosen B if they wanted to.
- grey-area 6mo agoSure, I'm just pointing out that the 2% headline figure is very conservative if not misleading as a far greater unknown number in group B will have done exactly the same (which I doubt ICML or those submitting papers actually want). This is probably a first step in clamping down on anyone doing this.
- kombookcha 6mo agoOh, I misread your post - that's fair!
- hodgehog11 6mo agoI'm amazed that such a simple method of detection worked so flawlessly for so many people. This would not work for those who merely used LLMs to help pinpoint strengths and weaknesses in the paper; there are separate techniques to judge that. Instead, it only detects those who quite literally copied and pasted the LLM output as a review. It's incredible how so many people thought it was fair that their paper should be assessed by human reviewers alone, and yet would not extend the same courtesy to others.
- everdrive 6mo agoGenerally speaking people have worse impulse control than they believe they do. Once you give a tool that does most of the work for you, very very few people will actually be able to use that tool in truly enriching ways. The majority of people (even the smart ones) will weaken over time and take shortcuts.
- hodgehog11 6mo agoThat's an excellent point. It seems likely they thought they could operate as a proper reviewer, but when the deadline came, they took the shortcut they knew they were not supposed to take. It really does sound like an addiction when you put it this way.
- jacquesm 6mo agoI have a very simple solution to this but it is a bit expensive. I run two laptops, one that I talk to an LLM on and another where I do all my work and which is my main machine. The LLM is strictly there in a consulting role, I've done some coding experiments as well (see previous comments) but nothing that stood out to me as a major improvement. The trick is: I can't cut-and-paste between the two machines. So there is never even a temptation to do so and I can guarantee that my writing or other professional output will never be polluted. Because like you I'm well aware of that poor impulse control factor and I figured the only way to really solve this is to make sure it can not happen.
- jjgreen 6mo ago
- bonoboTP 6mo agoTo be clear, as the article says, these authors were offered a choice and agreed to be on the "no LLMs allowed" policy. And detection was not done with some snake oil "AI detector" but by invisible prompt injection in the paper pdf, instructing LLMs to put TWO long phrases into the review. They then detected LLM use through checking if both phrases appear in the review. This did not detect grammar checks and touchups of an independently written review. The phrases would only get included if the reviewer fed the pdf to the LLM in clear violation to their chosen policy. > After a selection process, in which reviewers got to choose which policy they would like to operate under, they were assigned to either Policy A or Policy B. In the end, based on author demands and reviewer signups, the only reviewers who were assigned to Policy A (no LLMs) were those who explicitly selected “Policy A” or “I am okay with either [Policy] A or B.” To be clear, no reviewer who strongly preferred Policy B was assigned to Policy A.
- mikkupikku 6mo agoIn that case, I hope these frauds have been banned for life.
- hodgehog11 6mo agoI was thinking this too, but I don't believe this is the case, and I feel like it would not be a good idea either. Most of these people are likely students; this should be a learning moment, but I don't think it is yet grounds for their entire academic career to be crippled by being unable to publish in a top-tier ML venue.
- bumby 6mo agoWhat makes you think these are mostly students? I may have missed that in the methodology
- mikkupikku 6mo agoIf this is tolerated, it sends exactly the wrong kind of message. The students, if they are, should be banned for life. Let them serve as an example for myriads of future students, this will be a better outcome in the long run. This didn't trip for people who were merely bouncing ideas off a LLM, they caught people who copy and pasted straight from their LLM.
- coldtea 6mo agoAnother 30-40% just didn't get caught because the reviewers also used LLM in their "reviews"
- jsnell 6mo agoI think you've misunderstood something. This is not about rejecting LLM-written articles. It is about rejecting the articles of people who used LLMs for their reviews. So your quip is just nonsensical.
- coldtea 6mo agoThose second-level reviewers, checking whether the first-level authors used LLMs in their reviews, also used LLMs to do their screening, and the latter missed it in many cases. My original point (loosely based on the subject, not TFA) is that it's LLMs all the way down, way more than it's "measured" to be.
- jacquesm 6mo agoI keep spotting clear LLM 'tells' in text where I know the people on the other side believe they're 'getting away with it'. It is incredible at what levels of commerce people do this, and how they're prepared to risk their reputation by saving a few characters typed. It makes me wonder what they think they are getting paid for.
- bonoboTP 6mo agoBased on my experience on HN, many people can't see the tells. They may pick up on a few meme things like emdashes or "delve" or "rich tapestry", but can't detect the general tone or cadence reliably. So maybe those people are right and are getting away with it for most readers of it.
- grey-area 6mo agoInteresting, so someone submitting a paper for review could also submit one with hidden instructions for LLMs to summarise or review it in a very positive light. Given this detection method works so well in the use case of feeding reviewing LLMs instructions, it should also work for the original submitted paper itself, as long as it was passed along with its watermark intact. Even those just using LLMs to summarise could easily be affected if LLMs were instructed to generate very positive summaries. So the 2% cheaters on policy A, AND 100% of policy B reviewers could fall for this and be subtly guided by the LLMs overly-positive summaries or even complete very positive reviews (based on hidden instructions). That this sort of adversarial attack works is really quite troubling for those using LLMs to help them understand texts, because it would work even if asked to summarise something.
- gregdeon 6mo agoThe conference organizers are very much aware of this possibility. Prompt injection for the sake of getting a positive review is explicitly banned.
- wood_spirit 6mo agoThen these papers with these instructions get included in the training corpus for the next frontier models and those models learn to put these kinds of instructions into what they generate and …?
- Tade0 6mo ago> Interesting, so someone submitting a paper for review could also submit one with hidden instructions for LLMs to summarise or review it in a very positive light. I may or may not know a guy who added several hidden sentences in Finnish to his CV that might have helped him in landing an interview.
- duskdozer 6mo ago>several hidden sentences in Finnish Is this a reference to something?
- mika-el 6mo ago[flagged]
- nulltrace 6mo ago[dead]
- geremiiah 6mo agoIf you need an LLM to understand a paper you should not be a reviewer for said paper.
- klabb3 6mo agoLLMs were used to produce the review, not understand the paper.
- quinndupont 6mo agoHow is nobody considering the broader political economy of scholarly publications and reviews? These are UNPAID reviews! Sure, maybe ICML isn’t Elsevier, but they are cousins to the socially parasitic and exploitative companies, at the very least. Hiding behind a false “choice” to not use AI or basically not use AI isn’t an appropriate proposal. This is crooked and shameful. We should boycott ICML except we can’t because they are already the gatekeepers!
- qbit42 6mo agoWhat? Why is that a false choice? The only way you got caught here is if you literally gave an LLM the PDF and used its response verbatim. And they didn't give a permanent ban or anything, these authors can just resubmit to another conference, of which there are many.
- quinndupont 6mo agoImagine you are poor and a rich person offers you a choice to steal some bread or some beer. It’s not a real choice because you are poor and therefore steal. The rich person offering the choice is wrong.
- qbit42 6mo agoThe choice was to review using AI or not, they can just say no? And review like we’ve done for years without AI tools. Are you objecting to ICML’s reciprocal reviewing policy? The alternative as I see it would be to charge for submissions and pay reviewers. There are pros but also clear cons when it comes to fairness.
- bonoboTP 6mo agoYour job as an academic is to disseminate your research and engage with the research community through service such as reviews, talks etc. It's part of the job, and people get a salary as university employees or company employees for this. ML conferences aren't for profit ventures. If you submit papers and expect others to review it, you should reciprocate as well.
- merelysounds 6mo agoRelated discussion elsewhere and from a different point of view: > ICML: every paper in my review batch contains prompt-injection text embedded in the PDF source: https://old.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/1r3oekq/d_icml_every_paper_in_my_review_batch_contains/ https://old.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/1r3oekq/d_... There are recent comments there as well: > Desk Reject Comments: The paper is desk rejected, because the reciprocal reviewer nominated for this paper ([OpenReview ID redacted]) has violated the LLM reviewing policy. The reviewer was required to follow Policy A (no LLMs), but we have found a strong evidence that LLM was used in the preparation of at least one of their reviews. This is a breach of peer-review ethics and grounds for desk rejection. (...) source: https://old.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/1r3oekq/d_icml_every_paper_in_my_review_batch_contains/oazxubo/ https://old.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/1r3oekq/d_...
- aledevv 6mo agoGreat experiment! Correct me if I'm wrong, but this means that many people are using LLMs despite claiming not to. It's the first symptom of a dependency mechanism. If this happens in this context, who knows what happens in normal work or school environments? (P.S.: The use of watermarks in PDFs to detect LLM usage is very interesting, even though the LLM might ignore hidden instructions.)
- amoss 6mo agoThe rate was 1% so this does not mean that "many" people are using LLMs despite claiming not to.
- Lerc 6mo agoI have heard people say that they find that people who broadcast their distaste for LLMs secretly use it. I was fairly sceptical of the claim, but this seems to suggest that it happens more than I would have thought. One wonders what leads them to the AI rejecting option in the first place.
- causalityltd 6mo agoThe declaration of no-LLM was done for social prestige or maybe self-deception of self-sufficiency like "I don't need LLM". And when it was time to do the actual work, the dependency kicked in like drugs. A lesson for all of us with LLMs in our workflow.
- iso1631 6mo agoSure I use LLMs in my workflows. I use a calculator too. I can divide 98,324,672,722 by 161,024 by hand. At least I used to be able to do, but nobody is going to pay me to do that when a calculator exists. Likewise I can write a bunch of assembly (well OK I can't), but why would I do that when my compiler can convert my intention into it.
- causalityltd 6mo agoyeah but will you promise to do it by hand and then use a calculator? Or will you have every intention to keep the promise but it would seem such a chore by now (cuz calculator is such a part of your workflow) that you would minimize the sanctity of your promise in your mind? If yes, that's dependency, not usual use. (I just learned that choosing no-LLM also meant no-LLM on their own papers, so I am less generous with motivations now. Wasn't dependency, just plain old self-interest. Thanks for your point.)
- auggierose 6mo agoThe declaration of no-LLM was done so you are not judged yourself by an LLM.
- causalityltd 6mo agoIs this written in the linked article? Or the info is from other places online? Because I didn't see this. Article seems to say that this choice was given just for review (how you will review not how you will get reviewed) and the consequence of getting caught, their paper being rejected, was a punishment, not the original trade-off or motivation for choosing option A. Happy to be corrected.
- gethwhunter34 6mo ago[flagged]
- mvrckhckr 6mo agoIt’s ironic. I also doubt the validity of the AI writing detection.
- sampo 6mo agoTook me a while understand. So, the same person has both submitted their research article to the conference, and also acted as a reviewer for articles submitted by other people. And if they in their review work have agreed to a "no LLM use" policy, but got exposed using LLMs anyway, then their submitted research article is desk rejected. Theoretically, someone could have submitted a stellar research article, but because they didn't follow agreed policy when reviewing other people's work, then also their research contribution is not welcome. (At first I understood that innocent author's articles would have been rejected just because they happened to go to a bad reviewer. But this is not the case.)
- chriskanan 6mo agoSlightly more nuanced in that the reciprocal reviewer may have been essentially forced to sign despite having other commitments or may not have even been the lead contributor. Nowadays if a student submits a side project to a top-tier conference then it is required that if any authors have significant publication count in top-tier venues, then one must be a mandatory reviewer. Then one must sign that agreement. Students need to publish, much less so for me, where I really want to publish big innovations rather than increments, but now I get all these mandatory reviewer emails demanding I review for a conference because a student has my name on the paper and I'm the most senior, but I may have just seeded the idea or helped them in significant ways. However, many times those are not my passion projects and is just something a student did that I helped with, but now all AI conferences are demanding I review or hurt a student, where I'm the middle author. But if anything, I think the whole anti-LLM review philosophy is wrong. If anything we need multiple deep background and research analyses of papers. So many papers are trash or are publishing what has already been done or are missing things. The volume of AI papers makes it impossible for a human alone to really critique work because hundreds of new papers come out a day.
- sampo 6mo ago> but now all AI conferences are demanding I review or hurt a student, where I'm the middle author. What about you not putting your name on the paper? Or does it hurt the student if they publish in their own name only?
- justboy1987 6mo ago[flagged]
- AlpacinoDp82 6mo ago[dead]
- auggierose 6mo agoIt would be interesting to know how many of the cheaters didn't check policy A, but checked "don't care if A or B". Because the operative part of that is "don't care", not "I will strictly adhere to either policy A or B, whatever somebody else selects for me". So it is a sneaky and typically academic way of doing stuff. Also, "We hope that by taking strong action against violations of agreed-upon policy we will remind the community that as our field changes rapidly the thing we must protect most actively is our trust in each other. If we cannot adapt our systems in a setting based in trust, we will find that they soon become outdated and meaningless." is so academic and pointless.
- jillesvangurp 6mo agoThis is about reviewers, not authors. Title is a bit misleading. In any case, having reviewed a lot of mostly very poorly written articles and occasionally solid papers when I was still a researcher, I can sympathize with using LLMs to streamline the process. There are a lot of meh papers that are OK for a low profile workshop or small conference where you cut people some slack. But generally standards should be higher for things like journals. Judging what is acceptable for what is part of the game. For a workshop, the goal is to get interesting junior researchers together with their senior peers. Honestly, workshops are where the action is in the academic world. You meet interesting people and share great ideas. Most people may not realize this but there are a lot of people that are starting in their research career that will try to get their papers accepted for workshops, conferences, or journals. We all have to start somewhere. I certainly was not an amazing author early on. Getting rejections with constructive feedback is part of how you get better. Constructive feedback is the hard part of reviewing. The more you publish, the more you get invited to review. It's how the process works. It generates a lot of work for reviewers. I reviewed probably at least 5-10 papers per month. It actually makes you a better author if you take that work seriously. But it can be a lot of work unless you get organized. That's on top of articles I chose to read for my own work. Digesting lots of papers efficiently is a key skill to learn. Reviewing the good papers is actually relatively easy. It's enjoyable even; you learn something and you get to appreciate the amazing work the authors did. And then you write down your findings. It's the mediocre ones that need a lot of careful work. You have to be fair and you have to be strict and right. And then you have to provide constructive feedback. With some journals, even an accept with revisions might land an article on the reject pile. The bad ones are a chore. They are not enjoyable to read at all. The flip side of LLMs is that both sides can and should (IMHO) use them: authors can use them to increase the quality of their papers. With LLMs there no longer is any excuse for papers with lots bad grammar/spelling or structure issues anymore. That actually makes review work harder. Because most submitted papers now look fairly decent which means you have to dive into the detail. Rejecting a very rough draft is easy. Rejecting a polished but flawed paper is not. If I was still doing reviews (I'm not), I'd definitely use LLMs to pick apart papers, to quickly zoom in on the core issues and to help me keep my review fair and balanced and professional in tone. I would manually verify the most important bits and my effort would be proportional to which way I'm leaning based on what I know. Of course, editors can use LLMs as well to make sure reviews are fair and reasonable in their level of detail and argumentation. Reviewing the reviewers always has been a weakness of the peer review system and sometimes turf wars are being fought by some academics via reviews. It's one of the downsides of anonymous reviews and the academic world can be very political. A good editor would stay on top of this and deal with it appropriately. LLMs are good at filtering, summarizing, flagging, etc. With proper guard rails, there's no reason to not lean on that a bit. It's the abuse that needs to be countered. In the end, that begins and ends with editors. They select the reviewers. So when those do a bad job, they need to act. And when their journals fill up with AI slop, it's their reputations that are on the line. Like any tool, use caution and common sense. Blanket bans are not that productive at this stage.
- zulban 6mo agoI've learned a bit today about how often people on hn read the article when commenting. Or potentially bots who are way off. The title alone isn't enough to totally grasp what happened here, or the methods used. Extremely conservative detection. The real number must be much higher.
- Lliora 6mo agoI've seen a similar issue in our own review process. We've found that reviewers using LLM
- Iamkkdasari74 6mo ago[dead]
- ritcgab 6mo agoWell deserved.
- ozgung 6mo agoI think the real news from this experiment is that LLM usage is almost unavoidable even among high level professionals who are capable to and promised to do the task without LLMs. I don’t think these policies will be around in a few years. They are more like naive transition period attempts to stop a tsunami.
- gebveee70 6mo ago[dead]
- FabCH 6mo agoPeople in the comment asking for harsher punishment should note that we don’t know how many people selected the „I have no strong preference“ option and got assigned to group A randomly. It’s a bit harder to make the argument that those people _explicitly_ agreed to not use LLMs. And given how the desk-rejection logic relies on an ethical integrity argument, actual explicit intent is important.
- bonoboTP 6mo agoThey agreed that policy A is fine for them. Then they got assigned policy A and they were notified about this.
- luui_sh43 6mo ago[dead]