Stellenbosch dean flagged by AI detector rethinks authorship

Bertie Fielding, Dean of Science at Stellenbosch University, submitted an opinion piece to Nature Africa written with the help of AI. Two detection tools classified it as 100% AI-generated, and the handling editor gave him a choice: rewrite it in his own words, or confirm that he had written it.

Instead, Fielding used the resulting Nature Africa piece to describe what actually happened. His process starts with his own fragments and spoken arguments, which he then hands to a model to draft. The sentences are largely the machine's; the ideas, he argues, are not.

His authorship claim rests on "experience, judgment and original thinking, not on whether he personally typed the final sentences." The material behind the piece, he writes, came from "years of leading, teaching, doing science, making mistakes and trying to communicate difficult work beyond their own discipline." Two researchers on our tracked list circulated the essay after publication.

Fielding concedes that AI wrote almost all the final sentences, and that a reasonable reader might want to know that. He does not settle which two detectors flagged him, or what Nature Africa's disclosure requirement now looks like for the published version.