SECRET BOOKS MADE UP BY AI

 

Never heard of the Journal of International Relief or the International Humanitarian Digital Repository? That's because they don't exist.

But that's not stopping some of the world's most popular artificial intelligence models from sending users looking for records such as these, according to a new International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) statement.

AI models not only point some users to false sources but also cause problems for researchers and librarians, who end up wasting their time looking for requested nonexistent records, says Library of Virginia chief of researcher engagement Sarah Falls. Her library estimates that 15 percent of emailed reference questions it receives are now ChatGPT-generated, and some include hallucinated citations for both published works and unique primary source documents. "For our staff, it is much harder to prove that a unique record doesn't exist," she says.

This is not the first time AI has been caught making up false citations. The ICRC recommends that people consult online catalogs or references in existing published scholarly works to find references to real studies instead of assuming anything cited by an AI is real, no matter how authoritative it might sound. The Library of Virginia will be asking researchers to vet their sources for these requests, Falls says, and to disclose if a source originated from AI. "We'll likely also be letting our users know that we must limit how much time we spend verifying information."

To read the complete article, see:
AI Slop Is Spurring Record Requests for Imaginary Journals (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ai-slop-is-spurring-record-requests-for-imaginary-journals/)

Everyone knows that AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Grok, and Gemini can often hallucinate sources. But for the folks tasked with helping the public find books and journal articles, the fake AI bullshit is really taking its toll. Librarians sound absolutely exhausted by the requests for titles that don't exist...

You can't blame everything on AI. Papers have been retracted for giving fake citations since long before ChatGPT or any other chatbot came on the scene. Back in 2017, a professor at Middlesex University found at least 400 papers citing a non-existent research paper that was essentially the equivalent of filler text.

Why might users trust their AI over humans? For one thing, part of the magic trick that AI pulls is speaking in an authoritative voice. Who are you going to believe, the chatbot you're using all day or some random librarian on the phone?

To read the complete article, see:
Librarians Are Tired of Being Accused of Hiding Secret Books That Were Made Up by AI (https://gizmodo.com/librarians-arent-hiding-secret-books-from-you-that-only-ai-knows-about-2000698176)

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