Ian Mulvany

May 9, 2025

Is the FDA is using AI powered peer review?

This popped up in my feeds - https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-announces-completion-first-ai-assisted-scientific-review-pilot-and-aggressive-agency-wide-ai. They are rolling out AI powered peer review. 

>> “There have been years of talk about AI capabilities in frameworks, conferences and panels but we cannot afford to keep talking. It is time to take action. The opportunity to reduce tasks that once took days to just minutes is too important to delay,” said Dr. Makary.

The press release is short on details, so it's unclear if this is a home grown solution, what guardrails are in place, or if they are working with a large LLM provider. 

My own experience in this area suggests that the act of review contains a lot of tacit knowledge. I am sure that peer review is going to move in this direction, but the direct path on how we get there is not entirely clear so it would be great to find out more details about this initiative. If anyone knows anything please do share. 


About Ian Mulvany

Hi, I'm Ian - I work on academic publishing systems. You can find out more about me at mulvany.net. I'm always interested in engaging with folk on these topics, if you have made your way here don't hesitate to reach out if there is anything you want to share, discuss, or ask for help with!