[TYPES] AI-generated conference submissions

[Mae Milano]

This is a quagmire of a topic! I'm chiming in here mostly to point out
that we have *existing SIGPLAN policies*, inherited from our
publishers, that require AI disclosure on all submissions. So, if the
authors did use AI and failed to disclose it, that matter can be
referred to the publication board for review.

I'd however like to take the "student's side" as well for a moment
here.  I have been somewhat lucky; despite being on 3/4 of the PACMPL
PCs this year (bad idea, I know) I'm not feeling at all buried under
an avalanche of AI-generated papers that I have to review.  But I
*have* seen an enterprising undergraduate student or two who, newly
enamored with both programming languages *and* AI, take a crack at
spinning their idea all the way up to a paper largely without
supervision.  Where I have seen this, these students aren't trying to
game metrics, or boost their publication counts, or on some doomed
quest to get into graduate school; rather, they are genuinely hoping
that they have made a contribution, and have come from an academic
background that consistently rewarded burying the reader in formalism
as a way of "showing your work" no matter how useful that formalism
ultimately proves to be. They have an idea, and they know that papers
about the idea include a dense section of symbols that they can't
really read; so they generate a dense section of symbols and can't
really read it.

We definitely don't want to encourage this behavior! But when we
ultimately reject these papers, I hope we do so with the idea of this
student in mind. We may be the first "real" PL researchers from which
they've had a chance to receive direct feedback, and therefore are
also the first people with a clear opportunity to teach them about the
standards of publication in our field.

So, here's my suggestion: let's come up with a "form response" that
can be lightly tailored to each submission, outlining the 'usual'
kinds of confusion that Stephanie is calling out here and that I'm
sure many of us have seen from our own [undergraduate] students at one
time or another. Let's aim to make this response not about AI, but
about the need for parsimonious formalism---and in particular, why the
submissions we're seeing don't really fit that bill.  We can include a
suggestion to work in Lean or Rocq as a way not just to increase
confidence in the results but provide guardrails around the formal
development more generally.  And let's accept, as a community, that
it's ok to send a response like this *without* a deep review when the
presentation warrants it---even if there might have been an overlooked
recoverable insight deep within the technical tangle.

I hope we take this opportunity! Let's lead with kindness, and see
what happens next.


Mae

On Mon, Mar 16, 2026 at 4:03 PM Stephanie Balzer
<stephanie.balzer at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> [ The Types Forum, http://lists.seas.upenn.edu/mailman/listinfo/types-list  ]
>
> Dear all,
>
> I have now been numerous times on the receiving end on a what it appears
> to me (almost) entirely AI-generated conference submissions that I was
> assigned to review.  Of course I have no proof, but to me it was pretty
> obvious.  The submissions in question consist of an amalgamation of
> meaningful words (sometimes not entirely from the context the paper
> ought to be about), are generally well written, although meaningless,
> and even come backed up with some rules with horizontal lines and proof
> sketches (sometimes from various contexts).  That catch, however, is
> that the whole composition doesn't make sense.
>
> What are we going to do about this as a community?
>
> I have numerous concerns here: My immediate concern is that I do not
> like to spend my time on such submissions.  Even though it's quite
> obvious immediately that the paper is meaningless, it still takes some
> time to make sure and justify the verdict.  Another concern I have is
> the risk that, under time pressure, no due diligence is done, and we may
> end up accepting such a paper.
>
> As a first step we may require authors to declare whether AI was used in
> preparing their submission and what for and we delimit what uses are
> permitted.
>
> Looking forward to your thoughts,
>
> Stephanie
>