i would like to understand what people get, or think they get, out of putting a completely AI-generated survey paper on arXiv.
Even if AI writes the paper for you, it's still kind of a pain in the ass to go through the submission process, get the LaTeX to compile on their servers, etc., there is a small cost to you. Why do this?
Presumably a sense of accomplishment to brandish with family and less informed employers.
Published papers are part of the EB-1 visa rubric so huge value in getting your content into these indexes:
"One specific criterion is the ‘authorship of scholarly articles in professional or major trade publications or other major media’. The quality and reputation of the publication outlet (e.g., impact factor of a journal, editorial review process) are important factors in the evaluation”
Gaming the h-index has been a thing for a long time in circles where people take note of such things. There are academics who attach their name to every paper that goes through their department (even if they contributed nothing), there are those who employ a mountain of grad students to speed run publishing junk papers... and now with LLMs, one can do it even faster!