We know that training LLMs on LLM-generated text leads to an absolute collapse in quality.

This is often repeated, and true. But needs to be qualified.

Modern LLMs use tons and tons of “augmented” data, which is code for LLM generated or massaged data. Some is even generated during training, and judged; papers on that are what made Deepseek famous.

Training on LLM trash will, of course, yield greater trash, and obviously good text has to come from something real. But that’s because slop is slop. And there are issues with “deep frying” LLMs, yes, but simply training on LLM on LLM output does not necessarily reduce quality. It often helps, significantly.

And we also know that AI has been showing up in papers so if they haven’t, then this will be quite unreliable.

Now this is a problem.

TBH LLMs would be pretty good at flagging papers for humans to check, similar to what Wikipedia is already doing. But yeah, if you just feed a prompt bad papers, LLMs just assume the context is true, generally, and that’s a tremendous problem.