Abstract
In the past year, how many times have you written something and found yourself saying “it doesn’t matter—no one will read this anyway.” Alternatively, how many times have you read the first lines of a document, skimmed the rest, and believed that you understood the content? Too many to count I would guess.
It is my observation that we have collectively lost our desire to read for understanding, if indeed, we read at all. Social media platforms present our “understanding” to us and generative AI has the potential to completely overwhelm our reasoning abilities. We are losing the ability to understand nuanced discussions at a time when we desperately need to be able to argue scientific facts and principles with clarity.
I observe these trends through the lens of the Editor of a scientific medical journal. They are concerning and cannot be ignored. I take some solace in the fact that society is also starting to notice. The Word(s) of the Year offers a quick look into the thinking of our society.
The American dictionary, Merriam-Webster, based on the number of word searches has declared their Word of the Year for 2023 to be authentic. Authentic has a number of meanings including the following: not false or imitation; true to one’s personality, spirit, or character; and worthy of acceptance or belief as conforming to or based on fact.
Dictionary.com, a digital online dictionary with over 5.5 billion searches annually, decided to “using lexicography and data science, choose a single word that best represents, at this moment, AI’s many profound ramifications for the future of language and life.” Their 2023 word of the year was hallucinate: (of artificial intelligence) to produce false information contrary to the intent of the user and present it as if true and factual.
The Economist, an international business magazine, notes that ChatGPT means the same in every language throughout the world and it is their 2023 word of the year. ChatGPT is the fastest growing consumer application in history with over 100 million users in the first 2 months it was available.
I don’t believe it is a coincidence that authentic, hallucinate, and ChatGPT appear in 2023 as words of great interest to people around the world. It is only a matter of time before we are going to discover manuscripts submitted to JCMS that have been created using an AI chatbot. Currently, SAGE, our publisher, does acknowledge the potential benefit of large language models (LLM) but insists on disclosure and transparency within the manuscript and will not allow AI bots such as ChatGPT to be listed as authors.
In my last editorial, I lamented the reluctance of scientists to provide peer reviews of their colleague’s manuscripts. Perhaps a solution has been found with LLM peer reviewers or, more likely, ChatGPT authors reviewed by a rival LLM—no scientists at all.
Be good to each other.
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