[TYPES] AI-generated conference submissions

[Martin Lester]

Hi all.

I think it's worth considering the specifics of this comment:

On Tue, Mar 17, 2026 at 4:50 PM Jon Sterling <jon at jonmsterling.com> wrote:
>
> I wonder if we are speaking past each other... I think it is indeed a severe breach of ethics to send something that you knowingly haven't understood to a conference, and it is hard for me to come up with any valid argument to the contrary.
>

Is it a breach of ethics to submit a paper (as corresponding author)
if my co-author wrote a proof that I haven't checked or don't
understand, but I trust my co-author's honesty and judgement? I think
this is fine.

What, then, if I conceive of the AI as a colleague or co-author?

Under current rules and conventions, this is clearly not OK.
Submission rules ban AI-generated paper content and say AIs can't be
co-authors. Socially and legally, we don't view AIs as sentient and
don't permit them to take responsibility for their actions.

But if you interact with AIs in a conversational way, bouncing ideas
back and forth (as I do), it may be easy to fall into this trap.
Consider Terrence Tao's comment (over a year old, when AIs were not as
good as they are now) that conversing with AIs is like advising a
"mediocre, but not completely incompetent, graduate student". If
you're a student, AIs may well appear to display knowledge and
intelligence comparable to your peers.

Is it OK for two graduate students to submit a co-authored paper,
where the corresponding author hasn't fully checked and understood the
other's work? If so, then, rules and regulations notwithstanding,
wouldn't it be OK for a graduate student to submit, without full
understanding, a paper where some of the work was generated by an AI?

(For the avoidance of doubt, I don't condone writing/submitting papers
with needless formalism, or with AI-generated content that you haven't
acknowledged and checked/understood.)

Yours,

Martin.