14 July 2023
Neuroscientist Greg Siegle was at a conference in early April when he heard something he found “very scary.” Another scientist was gushing that ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence (AI) tool released in November 2022, had quickly become indispensable for drafting critiques of the thick research proposals he had to wade through as a peer reviewer for the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Other listeners nodded, saying they saw ChatGPT as a major time saver: Drafting a review might entail just pasting parts of a proposal, such as the abstract, aims, and research strategy, into the AI and asking it to evaluate the information.
NIH and other funding agencies, however, are putting the kibosh on the approach. On 23 June, NIH banned the use of online generative AI tools like ChatGPT “for analyzing and formulating peer-review critiques”—likely spurred in part by a letter from Siegle, who is at the University of Pittsburgh, and colleagues. After the conference they warned the agency that allowing ChatGPT to write grant reviews is “a dangerous precedent.” In a similar move, the Australian Research Council (ARC) on 7 July banned generative AI for peer review after learning of reviews apparently written by ChatGPT.
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