Hong Kong’s oldest university has launched an investigation after a published academic paper by a PhD candidate was found to contain non-existent references generated by AI.
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The corresponding author, Professor Paul Yip Siu-fai of the social work and social administration department at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), apologised for himself and his PhD student, Bai Yiming, on Sunday.
The allegation first appeared on social media platform Threads, with a user saying she “was told by a friend” that many of the references in the paper appeared to be the results of “AI hallucination”.
Yip told the media he had found out that Bai, the lead author of the paper, had used artificial intelligence (AI) to help with referencing without verifying the citations herself, while he had the task of gatekeeping as the corresponding author.
He claimed that, in his view, the issue did not involve academic integrity because the content of the paper, which was accepted after two rounds of academic review, was not fabricated.
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The paper’s other authors had only given advice and helped with data analysis, he said.