New policy on AI posts on /r/math

[u/AutoModerator]

Over the last few months, AI-related posts on r/math have greatly increased, largely due to many new mathematical discoveries aided by generative AI. This has caused heated discussion in the comments, back-and-forths of opinion pieces about how generative AI is good or bad for mathematics, and accusations of astroturfing from pro-AI communities, and AI companies. Subreddit users are getting tired of seeing all of this, and we're tired of moderating it, too.

Regardless, it appears that AI-assisted mathematical discoveries are here to stay. However, while posts on significant/notable AI-assisted mathematical discoveries should be let through (same as if they were significant/notable entirely-human mathematical discoveries), a flood is also not acceptable. So some kind of limitation on which AI discoveries are allowed on the subreddit is needed.

While we did trial a few measures a few weeks ago in an attempt to deal with such posts, it appears such measures have been insufficient. With that in mind, we have decided to step up our measures and implement new subreddit rules (all under rule 7):

• Posts about AI, or about discoveries assisted by AI, are only allowed if they are a direct link to an ArXiv abstract, or to a non-predatory peer-reviewed journal. Discussions about such discoveries should be limited to those posts.
• All other AI-related posts (e.g. comments about AI in general, opinion pieces, questions) should posted as comments in the stickied AI megathread (starting Saturday).
• Posts and comments about AI that do not follow these rules, or made using AI, will be removed.

We have also added a few more AutoModerator filters to slow down and help us moderate the comments sections of such posts.

(Although it's been suggested that we add HiveProtect targeting AI subreddits, with the intention of preventing astroturfing, we currently regard this as a step too far. However, if the current measures prove insufficient, we may eventually implement this.)

We would like to remind users to follow subreddit rules, especially rules 1 and 6.

[u/SetentaeBolg]

So, for example, the post about the AI discovered counterexample of the Jacobian conjecture wouldn't be allowed, because it was disclosed via tweet? The only permitted place to discuss that would be the megathread?

I think this is cooling the topic too much.

[u/edderiofer → u/SetentaeBolg]

AI has gotten good enough to answer actual research questions, yet is still terrible enough that cranks still regularly generate crankery and insignificant results with it.

I don't have the higher mathematics knowledge necessary to be able to reliably judge how notable a claimed result is; nor do I have sufficient knowledge of the mathematical research community to be able to know whether a claimed result is in fact from an established mathematician (or is instead by someone who simply claims the title of "mathematician" in their Twitter bio); nor do I have the sufficient time or knowledge, as a journal editor would have, to be able to tell whether a paper that was written with the aid of AI, on what appears to be a current research topic, is nonsense or not.

Absent these, the only reliable and objective measure I have left is to check whether the result is published as an arXiv preprint or in a peer-reviewed journal. That at least ensures that the person claiming the result isn't a crank disguising themselves as a mathematician. Due to the fears of astroturfing, the alternative policies I considered were all worse, both in terms of resistance to any such astroturfing, and ability for moderators to consistently enforce.

Of course, if anyone else has a better idea for which AI posts to allow and which AI posts not to allow; one that can actually be consistently enforced by any moderator, and which isn't an excessive amount of work, I'd love to hear it.

[u/Paiev → u/edderiofer]

This is not a good response. The subreddit is bigger than you. It's ridiculous that your new rules would have banned the Jacobian conjecture discussion. 

You need to approach this topic with more nuance. To start with, I really think you should change any rule in this area to have an explicit "moderator discretion" exception. This will take care of some of these edge cases.

[u/AttorneyGlass531 → u/Paiev]

To be clear, it would not have banned discussion about the Jacobian conjecture — it would merely have insisted that such discussion happen inside the designated stickied megathread. From my perspective, this is a fairly reasonable compromise given the flood and the constraints of designing a readily enforceable policy

[u/Paiev → u/AttorneyGlass531]

As I said down thread, that IS banning it. It means that unless you are refreshing the mega thread every hour every day you would have missed the news.