Your comments have merit, but there are some caveats or flaws in that.

1 - What you say may be true in context of a face-to-face discussion, but that is not how the review process works. Reviewers are anonymous. Furthermore, reviewers' comments and suggestions are passed along to the authors who then have the opportunity to respond, clarify, edit and amend their papers.

2 - As you said, "Suppose you call someone out who *didn't* use AI to write their paper ..." If a reviewer called me out for that, I would more than welcome the opportunity to show my work, manuscript edits, and other paper trail. It is a chance to further explain my work and harden my credibility. Anyone taking offense because someone else thought it was too good is missing an opportunity. If the reviewer is a dimwit, you can easily defend your work. If instead the reviewer is being thorough, conscientious, and detail oriented, you might have found a new friend after you explain yourself.

3 - As you said, "suppose you call out someone who used the AI as a crutch, rewriting the AI sentences in their own words". That is fair. I do not and never will use ChatGPT or other AI to generate text. I have no need to because I can think and write. But, other people who also can think and write have different work styles. If an AI can generate a synopsis from which an author can expand or expound in their own words, that is not much different than reading and pasting a bunch of article abstracts in your notebook as a staring point from which to amalgamate your own summary and words. It is all a matter of degree. Was the AI text just a seed, a starting point, or did the author verbatim post the AI text? There should be a requirement by publisher-editor-reviewer's that any AI support be submitted with the manuscript so they can be cross-checked to see if "matter of degree" criteria have been exceeded.

4 - You left out another category - when the "author" just uses AI as a matter of cheap, sleazy, lazy plagiarism. That is what publisher-editor-reviewer's need to be on guard against. Any time a reviewer becomes very detailed, exacting, and demanding, that is what serves the purity of the process, of knowledge, and public safety. We have entered an era where publisher-editor-reviewer's need to worry and oversee the originality and honesty of the writing as much as the originality and honesty of the research itself.

I read the article, parts of it at least.
https://enriccorona.github.io/...
Here are some key excerpts:

They start with audio or text-to-audio, then generate a series of body and face gestures to represent the sequential movement of the "speaker". They then use the person's one image to paint onto the movement models. The technicalities between this generative diffusion process and conventional CGI are obviously very different, but conceptually, it seems like the usual process of building a wire-frame, animating it, then skinning it.

If you have played with AI image generation (Image Creator, DALL-E, Midjourney, etc), you know that these services typically return 4 or some number of images for a given text prompt, and if you use the same prompt N times, you will get 4xN different images. That is the nature of the "stochastic diffusion model" yielding a "one-to-many mapping" of single input to multiple outputs, evidently very well defined in their MENTOR dataset which maps many facial expressions and body poses to each speech sound.

I can see the utility of this in making more realistic looking animations, lifelike cartoons if you will, just another approach to cgi instead of modelling, meshing, shading. But, I am having trouble seeing the value of using this with real people's images. I am sure there must be clever people out there with all kinds of usage ideas, but I cannot envision a situation where I ever said to myself I wish that I could see a false animation of some real person talking. Of course, use and abuse are different things, and this is all more aligned to the abusers than the honest or creative users.

For example, if I get a phone call from someone who has a picture in my contact list, this technology could animate them speaking from that picture. It would be a false "video call". I use this as an example because it seems obvious that someone in some tech company will tout that as a use case for his technology. After 150 years of using telephones, most people don't care that they cannot see the other person, and if they want to, bona fide video calling is a reality just by pressing the right button or icon on your smartphone. To make a moving avatar of the person lip syncing to the conversation is pointless (to me at least), and it would chew up battery time.

And, that is all this technology is, as they explain it, a way to generate lip syncing (and hand syncing). Aside from the gee-whiz factor, it is hardly more meaningful than old technologies like Syncro-Vox which put real lips on cartoon images, as in the 50s-60s cartoon Clutch Cargo:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

So, if you can think of a good use for this other than deepfakes to deceive for nefarious reasons, please comment and explain your insights.

My subjective sense (I have not tallied the numbers) is that there is a huge upsurge on Slashdot of stories about AI, it is what is in the news. Most of the stories seem less or none about the technicalities of the technology, as would be appreciated here on Slashdot, and more about moral and social implications and the abuses of the technology. Call me dull and lacking insight, but I see this article as playing to the abuses more than the uses.

Fifteen years ago or so, there was the same mood in reporting about early SpaceX launches with Falcon. There were blow-ups and other failures, and as I recall, a lot of mocking and skepticism.

(It's hard to believe that it was actually quite some time ago, depending on your sense of time. Falcon 1 program was 2005-2009.)

The skeptics were all wrong.
The comments you made are "right on the money", and they point out that the (some) media are doing the same thing now, but last laugh will be on them.
Agree, the plasma glow was cool.

Judging from the few comments already posted, I thought it might be helpful to describe the workings in an operating room and how to interpret this article. Refer to the linked article at Techspot:
https://www.techspot.com/news/...

An operating room and a case under general anesthesia typically has 5 staff - the surgeon; the surgical assistant who is indirect contact with the patient holding and exposing things for the surgeon, typically standing across from the surgeon on the other side of the patient; the scrub tech standing at the foot of the patient who passes instruments back and forth and prepares needed materials and technical equipment; the OR nurse who does not scrub, instead runs the room and makes sure supplies and activities are coordinated; and the anesthesiologist.

In the two pictures in the article, you can see the surgeon, the assistant, and the scrub tech. Only the scrub tech is wearing the goggles. One comment posted so far said:

Only things in direct contact with the patient and the small area of the "surgical field" are sterile. No need for other things to be. Notice that staff are wearing caps and masks. Personnel will wear their own eyeglasses, loupes for magnification. None of these are sterile. The VR headset need not be sterilized.

The article said:

This was spine surgery which is usually done with magnification through small incisions which is why the microscope is there. This gives the surgeon and assistant direct clear view of the structures being operated on. But, this limited field of view makes it difficult, at times near impossible, for the scrub tech to see directly what is happening. This is a peculiarity of spine surgery and some others. For most operations though, the field and the anatomy are in plain view for all.

During an operation, the surgeon is asking for instruments, and the tech passes them. Most OR techs, especially those who have worked a long time in a certain specialty such as spine or with a particular surgeon, know the routines intimately well and can keep the operation flowing very smoothly without delays or hiccups. The assumption for using goggles here is that allowing the tech to see the field, same view as the surgeon, fed by video cameras on the scope, would make the procedure all the smoother and more efficient. The downside is that the tech is now blind to what else is happening in the room. Notice that the article fails to explicitly explain that the surgeon is not using the goggles which would be pointless or degrade the surgeon's performance.

We have lived through this twice before in the past 35 years - the introduction of endoscopy into general surgical practice starting circa 1990, and then the introduction of robotics circa 2015. The process has been similar and will likely be the same for the VR sets. Surgical endoscopy and robotics (which is endoscopy plus physical manipulators) have both been important. Laparoscopy has been revolutionary in a mostly good way. It has made many operations simpler and safer, and especially easier to recover from. It has even enabled operations that were understood in principle for many decades before but were hard to implement with open procedures. Robotics is still young. It is turning out to be a genuine advantage for select purposes, making surgery for those problems easier, safer, more effective. For some other procedures and problems, it is plus-minus valuable, and for most others it is pointless. The downside is that young surgeons getting hooked on robotics means they are forgetting how to do open surgery. The bottom line is that many patients and problems are getting better care than they could have 20-30 years ago, but for other problems, the care is much worse than it was 50 years ago, and getting worse as surgeons forget basic skills - but that is another story.

With each of these technologies, the pattern is the same. Part of the impetus to these technologies are the surgeons who are saying "This is hard, riddled with complications, we need something better, maybe the tech will help." Part of the impetus is the tech companies responding to surgeons needs. But, part of the impetus is companies with engineers saying "Gee whiz, look what we can make, let's try selling it to the surgeons." It takes one to two decades to sort out what the real uses and indications are, and where it will or will not work.

I have not heard much from other surgeons thinking that VR is anything they want or need, but certain uses seem potentially valuable. For example, robotic surgery is done with the surgeon sitting at "the console" in a corner of the room 10 feet from the OR table and patient, unscrubbed. Although generally quite safe, if some "oops" were to happen, such as (on an abdominal case) accidentally or unavoidably injuring the aorta or vena cava or portal vein, there might be only moments to intercede to get that controlled and save a life. A VR headset and "joystick" at the OR table in lieu of the remote console might add a layer of safety. But, this has to be balanced against head mobility and general field of view.

I think we can expect a certain amount of companies trying to sell such systems to surgeons, and of course, they will claim that it is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Some surgeons will check it out, but many or most will rightly not see any value and not bother. For those who might perceive an indication and check it out, some will conclude "that was dumb", and others might find a niche for meaningful use. If there is legitimate use, it will not be clear for 10 years minimum, and that presupposes that VR headsets are accepted into general public use for whatever reasons they might become popular (and so far the companies making and promoting them have had a rough go at finding a sustainable use or market, or even making an ergonomically sound and unobtrusive device, which will be a sine qua non for use by a surgeon).

To reiterate, the article simply describes the scrub tech using the headset to get a direct view of the "down in the hole" spine operation, conceptually a fair use, but it does not mention if it was even worthwhile. It is marketing hype, primarily from the company, perhaps also from the PR people at the hospital, but it is mostly meaningless and ho-hum as a newsworthy item.

I do not know the answer.
But, it is an intriguing observation.
If the plastics have an affinity for lipids, or vice versa, does it allow micro-particulates that entered the body a chance to adhere to cells or surfaces, or transfer within the body?
If so, does that in turn directly cause some sort of toxic interaction with cells leading to disease, or is the atherosclerosis from usual causes related to heightened inflammation combined with other risk factors?

Also, the paper makes no claim or implication that the plastics cause ASO, just that in people with carotid aso, death rates are higher in the plastic group. Presumably, plastics in the atheroma are increasing thrombogenicity of the plaque (tendency to clot), or increasing inflammation which is a potent thrombogen. What you are asking about is intriguing in that regard because an affinity for certain lipids or surfaces could be the reason for the micro-particles to adhere and incorporate into those lesions.

Just pondering the question makes me wonder if nanoscale particles could interact with cell membranes because of affinities or solubilities of the plastics versus lipids. Lipids are implicated in atherosclerosis and their thrombotic complications, which is why testing and treatment for cholesterol and lipoproteins is so important.

I had never considered that issue, but it is observations like that than can trigger better understanding and further study of a topic.

It has always fascinated me that experts and researchers in a field can spend untold time and dollars "looking for answers" for a question, but the answer finally comes because of a humble observation from some seemingly unconnected field that provides the "Aha!" moment. I wish I could think of one off the top of my head, but it seems like I have read stories like that countless times in the history of discovery.

Sorry, I don't mean to be your personal party pooper, but almost every word in your comment is incorrect or out of context.

The study found polyethylene (PE) and vinyl (PVC). Most synthetic fibers in clothing are polyester. Vinyl is not something that most people wear everyday. PVC may be prevalent in the environment, with mnp's (micro-nano-plastics) being a large concern, but there are many sources of pvc in objects we interact with daily, but clothing isn't one of them. The age group of people with atherosclerosis (ASO-arteriosclerosis obliterans) is not one that is likely to have had much vinyl clothing exposure.

The vector of introduction for mnp's into the body needs study. Oral ingestion of environmental contaminant mnp's occurs, and translocation across bowel is likely (there are studies showing mnp's in bowel). But, translocation across the portal circulation and liver into the systemic circulation, versus vascular short circuit across porta-systemic collaterals - that's an open question. Your comment is partially correct and intriguing but overly simple as a pathogenic mechanism.

The study explicitly states : "Microplastics and nanoplastics (MNPs) are emerging as a potential risk factor for cardiovascular disease in preclinical studies. Direct evidence that this risk extends to humans is lacking." The authors are looking for evidence that there is an association, not to prove a specific pathogenic mechanism or cause and effect. And, they succeeded, showing a hazard ratio of 4.5 for death among those with and without mnp's in their system.

Disease and pathology are complex multi-factorial non-linear dynamical systems, and that is especially true for chronic degenerative diseases such as ASO. No one factor by itself "drives strokes and heart attacks", but anyone knowledgeable about vascular pathology and medicine will immediately recognize the importance of this study and the histological findings and the study statistics. They do indeed prove that those with plastic in their plaques are at much greater risk of dying in the next three years.

With countless fields of study, journals, and papers out there, ever increasing, no one person can ever be fully up to date. I too am unaware of a million things I know nothing about or have no engagement in that industry or discipline. If you are unaware of such studies, time to crack a book (or PubMed, or something ...).

The reason there is a notable upsurge in studies and reporting on this subject is because there is mounting evidence of problems. Elucidating pathogenic pathways are still early, but many people who know this subject are getting grants and doing research - because there is something of concern. Crack a book.

Wrong. Pathology like this operates largely through mesenchymal defense cells called macrophages which are on the order of 5-10 microns. The size, shape, textures, and edges of materials have a profound influence on the behavior of mesenchymal cells, and that influences design and complications of certain implantable polymer devices. The particles they found are on the order of a micron or less, but that is relatively big compared to the cells, so they can indeed have an effect. If the microscope revealed mnp's directly associated with macrophages (mp's), it is because mp's are responding to them which is their job. A common "everyday" histologic feature in clinical medicine is the "foreign body giant cell", which is a syncytium of macrophages that respond to foreign materials, especially organic polymers. The ability of mp's to recognize them comes either from their chemistry, their shape and mechanics, or through an intermediary such as protein or platelet adhesion, and the mechanical causes at this scale are well documented over the past 60 years of polymer device development.

If cells are responding and pathological lesions are arising, then they are not biologically inert. They are often considered chemically "inert" in the lab under human-habitable conditions, but when implanted devices cause inflammatory complications or extrude, the microscope shows a rich mix of materials degradation and cellular response.

?WTF

No. They cannot pass through cell membranes. Crossing a cell membrane happens in several ways - endocytosis, gate-regulated diffusion, gate-related active transport, membrane translocation, etc. We correlate mechanisms with chemistry and size, and size is usually expressed in molecular weight daltons, sometimes in angstroms. If PVC and PE fragments are small enough, let's say up to a 10^5 - 10^6 daltons perhaps allowing some intracellular material, we would be in a realm that we do not yet understand, and the authors would not have seen that under the microscope. But for the particles observed in this study, "jagged-edged foreign particles among plaque macrophages" they did not pass through membranes. They were extra-cellular, and MP's surrounded them.

See comment above. They are being degraded by enzymes or cells, as we see under the microscope on explanted specimens.

On that point, mounting evidence indicates you are correct.

Crack a book.

How dare you insult my cats ! !

Yes, you are right.

In the movie "Real Genius", at the beginning of the college year, students and teachers all show up in the big lecture hall. A running joke through the movie is that as the semester progresses, fewer and fewer students show up, replaced by their tape recorders. Eventually, the professor is lecturing to a room of only tape recorders. Finally, there is just a tape player up front "speaking" to others. One can fantasize the scenario where eventually the board of directors replaces the CEO with an AI player to mange the other underling AI's, thereby eliminating yet another high paying unearned salary.

Your comments are insightful and well stated, much appreciated.
But, I would take a nuanced exception to this statement:

From what I have seen, "great at summarizing" is inaccurate or at least relative. You are correct in stating that AI might be best suited for that purpose, given the technicalities of how AI works. But the "summaries" I see are not nuanced, insightful, deep. They just accumulate words into technically correct sentences, but without a "concept of facts" as you stated. The summaries are juvenile and devoid of concept or subtlety or contextual insight. When I see such summaries, they seem written by a 3rd grader or at best a sixth grader but, but they do not come up to the level of what most average high schoolers are apt to write.

Others may see it differently, but many of the things I've read over past 6-12 months, such as with "search" results, have a tone and tenor so different than true intelligence and the way text used to be written 2 years ago, that these often worthless 'results" are easy to spot. I rarely find them "great at summarizing" even when the results are factual and nominally correct.

I read the original article.
https://www.nature.com/article...
It is not pay-walled. It is a good read. It was a study by smart clever people analyzing Juno data from a Europa close flyby. In distinction to prior model-based estimates of surface ice radiolysis and thus H2-O2 generation rates and fluxes, they calculate gas generation rates based on directly sampled atmospheric data. By their data and calculations, O2 generation is slower than previously predicted.

Radiolysis (coming from Jupiter) occurs only at Europa's surface. If any oxygen permeates through kilometers of ice to get into the oceans below, flux into the ocean is going to be low and slow at best, and now estimates make it even lower. But, in that regard, analysis requires a gazillion assumptions and estimates, so it is hardly more than a mental exercise - and a good one at that - but no one should be surprised at some time in the future that we find out that year 2024 cogitations on the physics of it all missed by a Jovian mile.

Concerning life, the paper makes just one statement :
"Unless Europa’s oxygen production was significantly higher in the past, the O2 production rates found here of less than the 18kgs1 available to be retained in Europa’s surface ice provide a narrower range to support habitability than previous model-driven estimates."

The problem though is that oxygen is irrelevant and inconsequential to a discussion of life in this context.

The people writing the report seem to be very capable objective scientists. Any subjective or sensationalistic re-interpretation of their work - SETBACK of Hopes for Life - comes from the Guardian report, yet another instance of the terrible "science reporting" for ad dollars that has destroyed real journalism.

Earth's early atmosphere had "no" oxygen - probably a lot like Titan. Earth life arose in the chemical medium of its day about 3 billion years ago. Nature devised a number of ways for organic chemistry to capture energy, and in the earliest days, it is thought to have been heat such as near hydrothermal vents. Photon capture photosynthesis led to oxygen generation and an oxygen atmosphere supporting aerobic life, but that was a late event, and even now there are countless microbial organisms that thrive on non-aerobic chemistry.

So, life on Europa, if there, deep in the dark, is very unlikely to have anything to do with oxygen. The Juno data is not a setback for anything - except perhaps for some people who should spend less time writing foolish popular media stories and read up on real science and try reporting that.

On Earth, most life, whether prokaryote or eukaryote, anaerobe or aerobe, has a certain common core chemistry based on nucleotides and phosphorus to shuttle electrons and handle the redox reactions needed for extrinsic "source" energy to be captured and turned into metabolites, e.g. ADP/ATP, NAD+/NADH. One can presume that one day in the future we will be there to get direct samples, and then we can see if that chemistry is "universal" or if nature is full of surprises that we cannot even guess at.

If the Monolith allows it.

But - one last thought:
"Unless Europa’s oxygen production was significantly higher in the past, the O2 production rates found here of less than the 18kgs1 available to be retained in Europa’s surface ice provide a narrower range to SUPPORT HABITABILITY than previous model-driven estimates."
Perhaps the research authors were not talking about natural evolution of life but rather about a habitable environment if we ever go there and need to harvest free oxygen to sustain our lives and activities (knowing for instance that light levels that far from the sun might not suffice to run an electrolytic oxygen generator at required capacity). In that sense, the authors might have clarified what they were referring to.

Your comments remind me of a story I read in the Wall Street Journal years ago. A man sneaked onto a locomotive and took it for a joy ride. The gist of the story was about the law enforcement and prosecutorial dilemma of it all. The first instinct of "the law" was to charge him with theft. But, the locomotive never left the rails. As it was never off of railroad company property, it was not stolen. As I recall, the best they could come up with was trespassing and unauthorized use. I thought there was a certain irony or comedy in that, so I never forgot it.

The plan is to put the sample return lander-launcher on the surface, then have it rendezvous in Mars orbit with the Earth return vehicle. That orbiting vehicle will carry the fuel and the motor needed to "punch it home".

This has already been done. The Apollo missions. The LM Lunar Module descended and landed after separating from the orbiting CM Command Module. To return, the lunar ascent vehicle left the landing stage behind as it carried astronauts and samples back to lunar orbit to rejoin the CM. The SM Service Module on the back of the CM had the fuel and motor to leave lunar orbit and return home.

The ascent vehicle carried two astronauts, moon rock samples, life support equipment and supplies, and a complex docking mechanism. Heavy. In contrast, the Mars samples to be returned are the sealed vials that Perseverance is dropping, probably just a few kilos net, without any life support requirements. So, the ascent vehicle will be carrying a small payload, and with efficient motors and fuels, it seems likely that details will work out easily enough out to get back to low Mars orbit, just like on Apollo.

Nonetheless, still a daunting complex but inspiring mission.

I agree completely.

But -

The final part of that third trilogy closed the book on the old original stories, but did leave an invitation to make a new story about a reborn Jedi order. You never know - maybe story, direction, characters will come together to make something actually good and memorable (for the right reasons). If done, right, Rey could indeed become a fan favorite heroine in the future. I tend to doubt it, but I also can't imagine anything being worse than the prior movies, so there has to be a chance of success.

I think you would get the same answers on Linux or Mac.

(Just joking. You made a good point.)

Their special agents for this are the Backdoor SLUTS.
(Side Load Undetectable Transpilers).