Affordable AI-powered writing software offers some hope to scholars unfairly criticised for their imperfect English, but more radical change is required, says Natalia Kucirkova. AI writing tools will not fix academia’s language discrimination problem. Last week I received a reviewer comment on my (rejected) paper. “Stay away from trendy progressive jargon like ‘lived experience’, ‘interrogating’, etc,” it recommended, adding: “Just talk like a human being.” The comment came from a reviewer at a top-tier US psychology journal, where one would expect the editors to safeguard authors from such upsetting remarks.
