LLMs now write lots of science. Good

MANY PEople are busily experimenting with chatbots in the hope that generative artificial intelligence (AI) can improve their daily lives. Scientists, brainy as they are, are several steps ahead. As we report, 10% or more of abstracts for papers in scientific journals now appear to be written at least in part by large language models. In fields such as computer science that figure rises to 20%. Among Chinese computer scientists, it is a third.

Some see this enthusiastic adoption as a mistake. They fear that vast quantities of poor-quality papers will introduce biases, boost plagiarism and jam the machinery of scientific publication. Some journals, including the Science family, are imposing onerous disclosure requirements on the use of llms. Such attempts are futile and misguided. llms cannot easily be policed. Even if they could be, many scientists find that their use brings real benefits.