Position: AI Should Verify, Not Judge, Scientific Work

AI reviewers are gaining more attention with the advent of LLMs. With the increasing volume of conference papers, the use of AI-based reviewers has been suggested and implemented to enable faster review cycles, improve review quality, and help the scientific community. In this position paper, we argue against the replacement of peer review by AI reviewers and advocate the use of AI review tools primarily to verify claims and improve the quality of the scientific work. We argue that AI review tools should be utilized primarily by authors during manuscript preparation to improve submission quality and streamline downstream evaluation. We ground our argument in the values of peer review and scientific process. Finally, we present research directions for the responsible integration of AI in the peer review process.