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This is a fairly cynical way to look at it. Consider the scenarios: Pre-LLM, most researchers wouldn't have bothered writing it up outside of a journal. They'r
by BeetleB 1mo ago
This is a fairly cynical way to look at it. Consider the scenarios:
Pre-LLM, most researchers wouldn't have bothered writing it up outside of a journal. They're extremely busy people, and it takes a lot of effort to write a well polished post. They'll either hand that task off to a grad student or (much more likely) simply not post it anywhere.
Thanks to LLMs, we know about it. I've often been critical of academia for not making their work accessible to the masses. This is a step in that direction.
Existing academics' writing is very poor. Did you try reading the average Academic Joe's essays in the past? Much poorer quality (with much poorer images). LLM-speak is a step up.
- aprilthird2021 1mo ago[flagged]
- rsrsrs86 1mo agoIt’s a step down. This is not efficient writing. It would rank as very bad academic writing indeed. It’s not even good for academia, journals are flooded with slop.
- BeetleB 1mo agoAcademic writing (as in journals) is pretty bad. This is way better. Asimov joked that when it was time to write his thesis, he worried that he wouldn't be able to write as poorly as is expected in academia given that he had spent most of the last decade trying to improve his writing.
- jazzpush2 1mo agoI am a researcher. Researchers, now more than ever with AI, have plenty of time to write something. The lift of writing is never the hard part, anyways.
- BeetleB 1mo agoWhen I was in grad school at a top tier university, academics never spent time writing anything but grants (or, occasionally, lecture notes). If they really felt they needed to (e.g. pressure to publish in IEEE Spectrum), they got an underling to do it for them and simply edited it.
- aprilthird2021 1mo ago> they got an underling to do it for them and simply edited it. This was not edited so that's already far more effort than was put into this