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The way that LLMs shield you from learning is a form of intellectual self-harm TBH.
@tante I've heard of PhD students submitting LLM-written abstracts for conferences and I'm like really??? How does this benefit you??
@CatherineFlick @tante the incentives, as ever, are presumably awful
@CatherineFlick TBH: For PhD Students I do at least see the pragmatic value. They need a bunch of publications which is a lot of work so generate the abstracts and try to hit any conference to fulfill your requirements.
(But I have a very cynical view on the way science is structured organizationally so maybe that's a tad unfair)
@CatherineFlick Like dissertations are written not to be read but to be written to get the thing. Publications for PhD students (or professors trying to get tenure etc) have been overloaded with so much external shit that it stands in the way of all the abstract values of science, sharing, learning etc.
Good luck defending a dissertation written by an LLM in a viva exam.
@tante They should still be learning how to pitch their work for conferences rather than relying on LLMs to do it for them. The PhD is a training exercise for academia (warts and all), writing these sorts of things is part of that training.
@CatherineFlick @tante I think an important consideration here is that academia has changed and will continue to change. I'm not saying "LLM use is going to be ubiquitous so PhDs should learn how to use them", but rather that I fully understand that as metrics keep being shit and the pressure to publish increases I absolutely get that someone doing a PhD now would be tempted, as @tante wrote above.
Writing pitches _is_ a part of academic work, but should it? To the current extent?
@pettter @tante I think it's a good skill to have, to be able to write about your work at different levels - experts in your very narrow field (PhD/journals), experts in a broader field (conferences/journals), educated non-experts (more general conferences/conventions), laypeople (media etc.). And being able to get up and talk about your work is really important too. There's a space for LLMs in academia but IMO it's more for writing support than at the conceptual level.