4/
(Note: the vastly general term "#AI" is here used, as often, instead of the quite more specific intended meaning: #GenAI / #SyntheticTextExtrudingMachines)
[1] Sarkar, R., 2026. Why AI can’t be trusted to write scientific reviews. Nature 653 (8116), 983–983. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-01616-3
1/
Commentary on #GenAI / #SyntheticTextExtrudingMachines use within #scientific reviews [1]
Relevance:
"The stakes are high.
#SystematicReviews and other types of evidence synthesis inform clinical practice, public-health guidance and policy decisions that affect entire populations. Errors could give false hope to patients or lead health systems to waste money on ineffective or unsafe interventions"
Among the points:
- privately-owned tools vs independence from industry
- tools miss context
3/
#StochasticParrot [2]: make vivid
"difference between how we use language and what's coming out of what I now like to call #SyntheticTextExtrudingMachines.
So once that paper was out in the world [...] I was frequently asked «How do I know that you're not just a stocastic parrot?»
And I after being asked this question a couple times decided that I'm not going to be in conversation with people who won't posit my humanity as a basic axiom of the discussion.
This is a #dehumanizing question"
In 1988, Donna Haraway proposed the concept of "situated knowledges" grounded in individual and community perspectives, as opposed to knowledge grounded in "a conquering gaze from nowhere". Gary Marcus has criticized Large Language Models and what Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna call their "synthetic text-extruding machines" (STEMs) for lacking
Daniele de Rigo
Andrew Shields