Illicit Use of AI by Philosophers Refereeing for Journals

In 2024, a study found that “7–17% of the sentences in the reviews [of computer science manuscripts] were written by LLMs”. It was only a matter of time before this spread, and now it appears to have reached philosophy. Last year, a philosophy PhD student in the US submitted a paper to a well-known philosophy journal. They write: The paper was rejected a few months ago; the first reviewer left very detailed feedback and suggested substantial R&R while seeming generally positive about the paper, the second reviewer suggested rejection. At first, I appreciated both of their feedback, and this was sort of my first go at submitting for publication anyway. However, I recently showed this feedback to someone else who thought the first reviewer (the more positive reviewer!) sounded like AI. [This] hadn’t occurred to me when I first received it, but it now seems very clear that it was AI-written. Although I know they aren’t the most reliable tools, I also checked with a couple of AI detectors…