When we go to grad school, we’re taught how to write a research paper. Each field has a more or less standard format, where different types of data go in specific sections. So if an LLM is trained on enough papers in that field, it can learn to plug in the information you provide according to those conventions.
In that sense, you’d give the LLM the purpose of the paper, the field you’re writing in, and the relevant data from your lab notebook. Personally, I never enjoyed writing manuscripts — most of the time goes into citing every claim and formatting everything correctly, which often feels more like clerical work than communicating discovery.
I don’t mind if LLMs help write these papers. I don’t think learning to mimic this stylistic form necessarily adds to the process of discovery. Scientists should absolutely be rigorous and clear, but I’d welcome offloading the unnecessary tedium of stylized writing to automation.
I am experienced in writing scientific papers, so I know what it takes.
I remain to be convinced that the tasks you propose an LLM could do contribute any more to the process of writing a paper than dictating to a typist could do in the 1950's. It's impressive for a machine, but not particularly productivity-boosting. Tedious tasks such as correctly formatting references belong to the copy-editing stage (i.e. very last stage of writing a paper), where indeed I have seen journals adopt "AI" approaches. But these processes are not a bottleneck in the scientist's workflow.
I certainly don't think the performance of LLMs that I'm familiar with would be any use at all in compiling the original data into scientifically accurate figures and text, and providing meaningful interpretations. Most likely they would simply throw out random "hallucinations" in grammatically correct prose.
But correctly formatting references is pretty much a solved task through reference managers, possibly plus bibtex. It's a well-defined task, after all, and well suited to traditional software techniques. [1] If someone used an LLM to format the references, you would still have to go back through them.
If there is any use for LLMs in paper writing, I would think that it is for tedious but not well-defined tasks. For example, asking if an already written paper conforms to a journal's guidelines and style. I don't know about you, but I spend a meaningful amount of time [2] getting my papers into journal page limits. That involves rephrasing to trim overhangs, etc. "Rephrase the following paragraph to reduce the number of words by at least 2" is the kind of thing that LLMs really do seem to be able to do reliably.
1: As usual, the input data can be wrong, but that would be a problem for LLMs too.
2: I don't actually know how much time. It probably isn't all that long, but it's tedious and sure does feel like a long time while I'm doing it.
Stroustrup took out object hierarchy introspection feature that was available before, which turned out to be a pretty handy feature that people kept trying to reimplement.
Finally coming into C++26, but boy the syntax, C++ keeps competing with Perl on that regard, and I say this as someone that enjoys coding in C++ on my free time.
In my experience, I don’t think hallucinations are a big problem anymore in terms of coding as long as you work within your domain of expertise.
The perception that AI tools make development faster is perhaps due to the part we spend a lot of time with thinking about how to write (like commenting) is solved instantly.
I think a lot of the delay is that it’s a new class of tool, and just like last gen IDE it takes a bit of getting used to and know where their strengths are, and know how to effectively fit it into your workflow.
It’s just that ADHD was not recognized until recently. We as a society is not well informed about this. But it’s important for us to feel the need to address this problem.
I think the best analogy is myopia. Until glasses were invented, people with poor eyesight were very limited in what they can do. People with glasses were stigmatized (remember “four-eyes”?). We didn’t know what caused it. Then things became normalized and lens making techniques became so advanced and ubiquitous that it no longer became such a big deal to see people with glasses. Then things like contact lenses and surgical procedures that came along which can correct it, making the person with myopia indistinguishable from one without. We are now starting to reach a stage where people can prevent the condition from developing because we have a better understanding of the disorder (although there are a lot of snake oils out there).
ADHD is like myopia, which limits the range of things that people are capable of. We have imperfect tools like adderall which has a lot of unwanted side effects. My hope is that technologies like AI personal assistants geared toward helping people with ADHD will act as a way to augment these deficiencies, much in the way glasses have. We as a civilization simply did not reach that stage.
“ You could argue that at its core, poetry is about distilling thoughts and emotions into their purest form.”
I really disagree with this statement. Language places heavy constraints on what can and cannot be expressed in poetry more than prose does. If poetry represents human emotion, then it should be easy to translate poetry to another language, but it’s not. Try using the same form of a poem and translate to another language and see if it has the same emotive effect - it’s really difficult to do so.
Poetry seems to express emotions because its constraints has limits on what can be conveyed effectively. As far as I understand, rhymes and meters used in poetry are more of mnemonic techniques from non-literate culture, like a check-sum or error correction mechanism. In post-literate culture, it’s merely a word play.
"Language places heavy constraints on what can and cannot be expressed in poetry more than prose does."
If by this you mean "rhymes and meters", then perhaps. But, there is a whole world of interesting poetry unconstrained by such concerns. The form is significantly less constrained than prose - so much so that when prose does not conform to certain standards, readers often wonder if it is not too "poetic" to be considered prose.
In fact, poetic language is described as "the fullest possible language" where poets "pack the absolute maximum of meaning (in every sense of the word) into every part of the poem." This density of meaning and the ability to use language in unconventional ways actually expands the expressive possibilities in poetry beyond what is typically found in prose.
“I think where a lot of parents go wrong is representing things as "because I said so" when in fact, there is a very good reason for what the parent is doing and explaining that reason to the child would both reduce resentment and be more valuable than the discipline being given. ”
Oh boy…if kids were that reasonable I would overlook almost any other deficiency. I don’t think this isn’t what you are implying, I think the author’s parents DID explain things to him. He just didn’t like what he heard.
Being unable to focus attention is not a beneficial trait in current society. Imagine having to have to take regular medication to control your blood pressure but cannot keep track of your regimen. It requires extra effort to keep the person healthy. Another is tackling difficult and long-term cognitive tasks, which is often necessary to function in society nowadays (I dread filing taxes). This may change in the future (especially with AI) but right now it is the way it is.
There are many traits that are advantageous in one environment and not in another: for example, sickle-cell phenotype became prevalent in regions where malaria was common, because you are likely to survive the infection. But otherwise the individual is likely to suffer from sickle cell anemia. People who have low calorie requirement may survive a famine, but may suffer from obesity in calorie-rich environment.
Many things are hard enough for “normal” person who would not be perceived as having ADHD, but it’s more so for people with it. The expectations are set by the modern society, but the actual challenges for ADHD are naturally present - thus they are classified as disorder. It’s commonly debilitating enough to be recognized as one.
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