Bioethics, like other areas of academic inquiry, needs to find new ways to ensure quality and integrity in publishing given the risks that generative artificial intelligence (AI) poses. We consider Earp et al’s editorial a helpful contribution to deliberation on what those ways might be.
However, we worry that Earp et al’s proposal, namely, to require prescribed declarations of generative AI use in all manuscripts submitted to the Journal of Medical Ethics, may be futile and possibly even self-defeating. We illustrate our worry by considering the putative function and value of such declarations.
First, it seems to us that the expected function of AI use declarations in peer review contexts goes beyond simply reporting facts or supplying information about authors’ use of AI. Rather, as is implicit in Earp et al’s discussion of norm setting, the move from a private tick box on a submission platform to a declaration within…