Back in 2016, I did write a paper with a title like that, a 6,000 word article about a perceived shortage of people to adequately fill cybersecurity roles. And I presented that paper, a PDF of which you can download with this link, at that year's Virus Bulletin Conference in Denver, Colorado.
I was presented with an audio player below a garbled version of the paper's title, and what I heard when I clicked "Play" struck me as shockingly bad. I knew at once that I needed to share it. First, to check my reaction. Is it really as bad as it sounds, and I don't mean the audio quality, I mean the content and the delivery style. Please give a listen:
After I listened to the "podcast" there was a request for feedback from Academia, Inc. Out of five stars I gave it one, and in the Comments section I wrote:
This "podcast" is an appallingly bad piece of work and an atrocious waste of resources. It's a just piece of computer generated audio that lacks human review, a misleading and inaccurate fabrication delivered in a halting manner with a weird accent and banal choice of words. The whole thing is miles away from capturing the spirit, import, and stated facts of the work upon which it based. Furthermore, the value of the paper being abused for this nonsense if six years old and the recording makes no note of this. If I were to talk about this paper today it would only be in the context of how its findings have been heeded or not heeded since the time it was delivered. Stephen Cobb
If you're wondering how Academia, Inc. got hold of my paper in the first place, I am still trying to figure out exactly, but it was published on the Virus Bulletin website in 2016, not long after the conference in. For anyone not familiar with "academia.edu" it goes around finding papers and then asking authors to confirm their authorship. On the surface this is a service that can help academics build an online portfolio, and I have one (click here to view).
Yes, I did create a free academia.edu profile, and for a while I did pay to be a premium member. But I'm not a career academic at this point so I stopped paying the premium fee, partly because I was finding ResearchGate a more useful alternative.
But no, I did not, to the best of my knowledge ask, or give permission to, Academia, Inc. to allow or instruct an AI to make that thing it calls a podcast. And I suspect there may be other authors out there who are getting emails like this and wondering a. what the heck? and b. why me? and c. is it just me?
That's the second reason I immediately decided to share this experience, first on Bluesky, then more widely as soon as I can make the time to do so. On Bluesky I posted,
Attention Academics! And anyone who uses academia dot edu. The company behind this misleadingly named website just emailed me to say: "An AI created a podcast of your paper."
I included a copy of the screenshot that's at the top of this article along with a chunk of ALT text that reads in part:
The author of the paper did not ask for this to be made. To the best of the author’s knowledge they were not asked if they would like it to be made. Permission to make the audio was not requested or given. The creation of this audio by AI was entirely instigated and performed by Academia, Inc. The author of the paper, which is now nine years old, has listened to the audio and found it to be completely obnoxious: “It bears very little relation to the meat of the 6,000 word paper it is supposed to be analysing.” The author has asked Academia, Inc. not publish this monstrosity."
So what happens next? If you get one of these emails I suggest you open it and check out "your" podcast. When you get to the feedback page note the choices that Academia, Inc. appears to be offering in the form of either/or check boxes:
- Either:
- Add this AI Podcast to my public Academia profile. This will drive more visibility and downloads to your paper.
- Or:
- Do not display this AI Podcast on my Academia profile. We won't display this podcast publicly or generate any additional AI Podcasts for your papers.
Why do I say "appears to be offering? Because when you submit the form, you get this less than reassuring message: "The AI Podcast feature is not ready yet. Your podcast will [sic] private. Thank you for your feedback. The Academia Team"
All of which raises a LOT of questions. If I can find the time I will work on finding answers, but so far this is just another time-wasting interruption of my work, caused by someone who decided to mess with my work.
#AIEthics anyone?
