The International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) Executive Committee “unanimously resolved to suspend all formal links and activities with Deep-time Digital Earth (DDE) for one year with immediate effect”. The IUGS Communique is at the end of this post. Some background below to the current situation. This includes links to three public discussions in scientific publications with DDE regarding GeoGPT in June 2024, October 2024 and March/April 2025. You can read evidence from both sides of the debate.
March-April 2025 Published Letters
In response to the GeoGPT Team (DDE and Zhejiang Lab) letter ‘GeoGPT: An Update’ published in the ‘Geoscientist’ (March 2025) my letter in reply was published in the ‘Geoscientist’ in April 2025. Persistent concerns exist around the GeoGPT application, promoted by DDE. This is now through an MoU with Zhejiang Lab as of March 2025, prior to this DDE promoted the application as its own. These include lack of transparency, and the potential for censorship and the erosion of freedom of speech, particularly for the international community researching social geoscience topics where geology meets society.
https://geoscientist.online/sections/viewpoint/letters/geogpt-concerns-remain/
October 2024 Published Letters
In response to an article ‘GeoGPT: Open Science in practice’ from Deep-time Digital Earth (DDE) project team about the GeoGPT Application in the ‘Geoscientist’ in October 2024 I joined the President of the Geological Society of America (GSA), Executive Director of the Geological Society of London (GSL) and President of the International Association for Promoting Geoethics (IAPG) in publishing a letter in reply. It also included supporting quotes from the President of the Geological Society of Nigeria , and a UNESCO representative on AI Ethics. Concerns included transparency, quality, ethics, state censorship, and safety.
June 2024 Published Letters
Back in April 2024 I wrote a letter to the ‘Geoscientist’ expressing my concerns on DDE’s GeoGPT Application. DDE were given right of reply. My letter, and the reply from the DDE GeoGPT team on potential copyright infringement and state censorship in the GeoGPT Application were subsequently published together in June 2024 here https://geoscientist.online/sections/viewpoint/geoscience-ai-in-crisis/ , and together in the Autumn Edition of the ‘Geoscientist’: https://geoscientist.online/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Geoscientist-Autumn-2024.pdf
The articles were picked up by the national press (The Guardian) in June 2024 who investigated further. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/jun/24/geologists-censorship-bias-chinese-chatbot-geogpt
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Below is the communique from IUGS published in April 2025.
Links to IUGS Communique on LinkedIN
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