Developing Judgment: Responsible AI Use for Peer Reviewers

Reviewing is the science and art of scholarly judgment, which forms a core pillar of knowledge production. Generative artificial intelligence (AI) poses a risk to this judgment during the review process. Evidence from outside HRD shows that AI‐assisted reviews are generally more lenient and converge on one another. This editorial develops reviewer‐facing guidance for human resource development (HRD) by identifying three points at which AI might enter the review process: the transmission of the manuscript, the expression of the report, and the formation of judgment. Transmission is prohibited across nearly all current policies; expression may be assisted and disclosed; and judgment must remain the reviewer's own. The argument we make here rests on research into cognitive offloading and expertise, and therefore on what a reviewer loses by delegating parts of this process to AI. We close with a research agenda to explore the potential for responsible AI use in reviewing.