Enlarge / An actual laboratory rat, who is intrigued. (credit: Getty | Photothek )

Appall and scorn ripped through scientists' social media networks Thursday as several egregiously bad AI-generated figures circulated from a peer-reviewed article recently published in a reputable journal. Those figures—which the authors acknowledge in the article's text were made by Midjourney—are all uninterpretable. They contain gibberish text and, most strikingly, one includes an image of a rat with grotesquely large and bizarre genitals, as well as a text label of "dck."

On Thursday, the publisher of the review article, Frontiers, posted an "expression of concern," noting that it is aware of concerns regarding the published piece. "An investigation is currently being conducted and this notice will be updated accordingly after the investigation concludes," the publisher wrote.

The article in question is titled "Cellular functions of spermatogonial stem cells in relation to JAK/STAT signaling pathway," which was authored by three researchers in China, including the corresponding author Dingjun Hao of Xi’an Honghui Hospital. It was published online Tuesday in the journal Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology.

The final panel of the day at our Frontiers conference this year was hosted by me—though it was going to be tough to follow Benj's panel because I didn't have a cute intro planned. The topic we were covering was what might happen to developers when generative AI gets good enough to consistently create good code—and, fortunately, our panelists didn't think we had much to worry about. Not in the near term, at least.

Joined by Luta Security founder and CEO Katie Moussouris and Georgetown Senior Fellow Drew Lohn , the general consensus was that, although large language models can do some extremely impressive things, turning them loose to create production code is a terrible idea. While generative AI has indeed demonstrated the ability to create code, even cursory examination proves that today's large language models (LLMs) often do the same thing when coding that they do when spinning stories: they just make a whole bunch of stuff up. (The term of art here is "hallucination," but Ars AI expert Benj Edwards tends to prefer the term "confabulation" instead , as it more accurately reflects what it feels like the models are doing.)

So, while LLMs can be relied upon today to do simple things, like creating a regex, trusting them with your production code is way dicier.

It's Frontiers Day at Ars Technica! Between the hours of 13:30 and 17:00 (all times US Eastern Daylight, UTC-4:00), we'll be carrying our livestreamed discussion with a half-dozen expert-packed panels on topics that range from IT to health care to space innovation. Each session will last approximately 30 minutes, with the last 10 minutes reserved for questions and answers from the audience. If you want to weigh in, leave your questions as comments on the YouTube stream . (You can also leave questions in the comments of this article, but YouTube is the preferred place because the moderators gathering questions will be focusing their efforts there.)

Schedule and sessions

The event kicks off at 13:30 EDT, with a quick intro from Ars Editor-in-Chief Ken Fisher and me. Even though this is a virtual event, Ken and I will be at the Ars studio at the Condé Nast Manhattan office to act as hosts. Ken will welcome everyone in and say some opening remarks, and we'll roll from there directly into the sessions. Each session will also be bookended by a short recap by Ken and me.

Session 1: TikTok—banned or not, it's probably here to stay (13:30 EDT)

Ars senior policy reporter Ashley Belanger gets to be up first with an especially relevant topic : While Congress and various states are vowing action against TikTok, will "banning" the app (whatever "banning" actually means) really come to anything? What are the policy implications around this kind of regulation, and how did we get here? We'll feature EFF Legal Director Corynne McSherry among the panel's guests, along with Columbia University's Ioana Literat and former White House lawyer and CPRI Executive Director Bryan Cunningham .

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson)

Ars Technica is pleased to announce the return of Ars Frontiers, our single-day event that explores tech's most vexing and fascinating issues. This year's event will be held on May 22, and everyone is invited! Attendance this year is virtual, so we'll be streaming all six sessions over the course of three and a half hours.

Readers who stop by the front page every day already know that Ars is a leader in bringing smart people together to talk about important topics—whether that means interviewing experts about current events or watching our highly skilled readers dissect an issue in the comments. In that same spirit of fostering brilliant discussions, this year we've curated a list of topics that explore the modern interconnectedness of innovation, with panels led by our subject matter authorities like Eric Berger and Dr. Beth Mole. All sessions will be streamed live on the Ars YouTube channel.

The main event

Ars Frontiers 2023 will feature six virtual sessions on May 22, starting at approximately 13:30 US Eastern Daylight Time (-4 UTC). Ars Technica Editor-in-Chief Ken Fisher and I will host the event from our studio in Manhattan. Each session will run about 30 minutes, which will include some time at the end for audience questions. Here's the line-up! (Session order might change between now and when the event happens.)

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson)

We made it! After announcing our inaugural conference and providing you with updates , we're ready to get things started. We've been planning this event for months, and as some of your favorite Ars staffers start hopping on planes to meet up in Washington, DC, later in the week, we'll be kicking things off with a series of livestreams before the main event on Thursday.

Today: Making critical infrastructure safer

We'll get things rolling today with a conversation between security researcher Lesley Carhart and Ars alum Sean Gallagher on Twitter Live at 1 pm ET. Lesley and Sean will be discussing how we should be thinking about cybersecurity when it comes to our critical infrastructure and how we continue to build a talent pipeline prepared to address the ever-increasingly complex challenges of keeping our digital society running.

Tuesday: How COVID is shaping virology research

We heard your requests for a Beth Mole-moderated COVID discussion (thank you!), and she and Dr. Angela Rasmussen will be with us on Tuesday to talk about how the pandemic is altering the field of virology—particularly in terms of future pandemic preparedness—and how COVID has given the public a first-hand look at the unknowns and long-term effects of viral infections. Join us Tuesday on Twitter at 3:30 pm ET.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson)

As we noted a couple of weeks ago with our announcement post , we're fast approaching the date for Ars Frontiers , our inaugural single-day conference. The event will be held next week, on May 12, in Washington, DC.

We're going to be exploring the interconnectedness of innovation—looking at how the things that change our world are interlinked. As we peer into our crystal balls, we're also going to try to answer a very pressing question: Can we still drive explosive growth in these fields while prioritizing ethical technology and sustainability?

Because conversation emboldens innovation, we've assembled a room full of subject matter experts in areas like human space flight, machine learning, information security, and bioscience to help us prognosticate. At Frontiers, Ars Technica editors will sit down and interact with those experts, and we'd love to have you on board for the ride. More details on how to request an invite to join us in person can be found at the end of this announcement.