It's completely antithetical to the whole enterprise to hide anything these researchers produce behind a paywall. Id be glad to see that go.

or even writing a thesis, is like climbing Mt. Everest. A lot of the value is actually in the effort you put into it.

As an analogy, in the music industry, if you need a jingle written, you wouldn't care if someone spent five minutes or five years writing it. AI is now filling that formulaic space very well. It won't replace the top end of humans output but it completely outdoes all the boilerplate stuff humans take an age creating