I think the premise was, before you had to actually do some work to create the thesis. And there was always the concern that yours could be one which was read deeply, so that thesis work had to at least show that you did some work. That there was meat behind the paper.
But now, it could simply be all a couple of prompts to an LLM.
The bar is just lower for not doing the work, now.
But it was always about the questions. Physics is difficult because you must formulate the right question to ask, and often once you do, the answer is revealed. Science, I think, it about creating many questions, then many hypotheses and discarding and weeding out the ones that don't work. This is the hard part: The creation of the report SHOULD be the easy part, and why do we care if it becomes even easier? That way we can develop more and more questions and hypotheses. AI cannot really help with the hard parts, it is not creative enough and lacks understanding of the real world.
None of that is relevant without you, the person architecting the questions or the idea, being able to cogently convey this to others. If you cannot understand it enough to transfer the knowledge, or if you are incapable of expressing your inner voice enough to transfer the knowledge, it's all for not.
That's one of the concepts this process is supposed to handle. Validation that you can transfer knowledge. Broken or not, that's the point of it, and what you're replying to indicates that at least in the past, you had to "do the work" to express knowledge, and also demonstrate that you could transfer that knowledge.
Fair point when it comes to training a PhD, but the creation of the actual report is no measure of that. The oral presentation is, along with speaking opportunities and conferences perhaps. Perhaps there are other, more contemporary approaches that could be encouraged in the PhD process?
But the report is! Simply because some people don't value them, doesn't mean all institutions don't. And being able to convey information by text, is as important as the verbal part too. That may not be fashionable in some places now, but I recall being forced to take several english classes, as an engineer, on the premise that "being able to communicate is important".
I agree though, we'll have to look forward, not backwards to solve this.
Comments
I think the premise was, before you had to actually do some work to create the thesis. And there was always the concern that yours could be one which was read deeply, so that thesis work had to at least show that you did some work. That there was meat behind the paper.
But now, it could simply be all a couple of prompts to an LLM.
The bar is just lower for not doing the work, now.
But really, that's the fact everywhere.
But it was always about the questions. Physics is difficult because you must formulate the right question to ask, and often once you do, the answer is revealed. Science, I think, it about creating many questions, then many hypotheses and discarding and weeding out the ones that don't work. This is the hard part: The creation of the report SHOULD be the easy part, and why do we care if it becomes even easier? That way we can develop more and more questions and hypotheses. AI cannot really help with the hard parts, it is not creative enough and lacks understanding of the real world.
None of that is relevant without you, the person architecting the questions or the idea, being able to cogently convey this to others. If you cannot understand it enough to transfer the knowledge, or if you are incapable of expressing your inner voice enough to transfer the knowledge, it's all for not.
That's one of the concepts this process is supposed to handle. Validation that you can transfer knowledge. Broken or not, that's the point of it, and what you're replying to indicates that at least in the past, you had to "do the work" to express knowledge, and also demonstrate that you could transfer that knowledge.
Fair point when it comes to training a PhD, but the creation of the actual report is no measure of that. The oral presentation is, along with speaking opportunities and conferences perhaps. Perhaps there are other, more contemporary approaches that could be encouraged in the PhD process?
But the report is! Simply because some people don't value them, doesn't mean all institutions don't. And being able to convey information by text, is as important as the verbal part too. That may not be fashionable in some places now, but I recall being forced to take several english classes, as an engineer, on the premise that "being able to communicate is important".
I agree though, we'll have to look forward, not backwards to solve this.