Petra de Sutter withdraws as prospective UvA honorary doctor
Petra de Sutter, who was to receive an honorary doctorate from the UvA next week, has withdrawn as a candidate honorary doctor. De Sutter, rector of Ghent University, used an AI-generated fake quote from Einstein in a speech. The issue caused such a stir that De Sutter withdrew as prospective honorary doctor.
Petra de Sutter, who was to receive an honorary doctorate from the UvA on Thursday 15 January, has withdrawn as a candidate for honorary doctorate following a Belgian affair concerning her use of AI in her inaugural speech last September. This was brought in the open today by journalists from the Belgian research platform Apache.
De Sutter has indicated to the UvA that she does not consider it appropriate “under the current circumstances” to proceed with the award ceremony and that she does not wish to cause any harm to the UvA in any way. De Sutter was to receive the honorary doctorate for her significant contribution to medical science, combined with her influential social engagement regarding transsexuality: she is a trans woman herself. A spokesperson of the UvA said the UvA understands De Sutter’s decision. “Her decision to withdraw was undoubtedly a difficult one for her, but given the circumstances, we believe it was the right step to take.”
Dogma
“Dogma is the enemy of progress. You may be familiar with this,” De Sutter asked the audience of her inaugural speech as rector of UGent on 19 September. “It was Einstein who said this during his speech at the Sorbonne in 1929.” It now appears that this is a quote generated by AI. De Sutter confirmed to Apache that the errors were caused by AI. The “hallucinated” quotes were “cleaned up” on the Ghent University website in October without any explanation. After questions from Apache, Ghent University added a disclaimer and made changes.
Rabelais
De Sutter also quoted from the 1979 “rectoral address” by the Jewish German-American philosopher Hans Jonas at the University of Munich. She called it a “guiding quote”, a paraphrase of what Rabelais wrote back in the sixteenth century.
De Sutter, who was a candidate in the rector election alongside Vice-Rector Herwig Reynaert, warned in her election programme that the output of AI tools should not be trusted “blindly” and that AI-generated texts “are not always easy to distinguish from original works”.
“I regret that I fell into this trap, I cannot undo this. This is a good lesson and will further stimulate the debate on AI,” the rector told VRT. De Sutter is a well-known Belgian. Before becoming rector of the university, she was leader of the progressive Groen party.
