AI in academia…how big a ‘problem’?* *This text was not written with AI.
Been silent for a while. Every day stuff, meetings, meditation(?)…you all know what I mean. However, what got me thinking lately, is the advent of LLM and its impacts on academia. I’ve heard a lot and read some more, about its grey aspects: students writing essays with it, fellowship candidates preparing applications with Chat gpt, or even full papers being drafted by AI. The challenges are clear for teachers, journal editors and PIs who have (too strongly?) relied on the writing skills of students and researchers as a means to show their capacity to do good science. But is AI bad for science? Less often we hear the positive aspects that, such an amazing technological development, can offer to academia. For starters, its speeds access to code which may be needed for statistical analysis, model building, larger coding or drawing neat figures. Nevertheless, it is for the writing that I think there is much to gain. One aspect that is without question, is how it improves speed in the p