Use of Artificial Intelligence in Scientific Writing. The Danger of Trying Too Hard to Please

The author describes his experience using several artificial intelligence programs to assist in the process of editing or preparing manuscripts for publication. While the programs were very useful to increase clarity and optimize the English of previously written text, problems arose when asked to review the literature to describe or expand on concepts, and then to cite references to support those statements. Citations were sometimes fabricated. The artificial intelligence program would even provide PubMed identification (PMID) numbers for references cited, which sometimes pointed to completely different publications. In references that were correctly cited, a request to extract data from their abstracts yielded data that were completely fabricated or incorrect. The newer versions of these artificial intelligence programs appear to be enormously helpful in helping with the process of scientific writing, but one needs to assiduously verify every statement made with regard to their interpretation of the medical literature and double-check any citations by retrieving and reading those references. Because statements made by these agents are proffered with great confidence and using excellent writing skills, the resulting errors can be difficult to anticipate. The motivations behind such errors are unknown, but appear to be related to a desire of AI to please the user at any cost. Programmers who create these tools somehow managed to allow such errors, and this issue must be addressed in future versions of AI. Also, it would help greatly if AI had access to the full text of medical scientific articles, which might be achieved by contractual agreements with the main medical publishers.