As the NNSA labs pivot to being AI labs issues like below will become increasingly important
Opinion: I Was Not Allowed To Type Prompts Into ChatGPT During My Chalk Talk And This Is Discrimination
By Dr. Rachel Simmons, Postdoctoral Fellow, Stanford University
Let me be clear about something: I am an excellent scientist. My publication record speaks for itself. I have first-author papers in high-impact journals. I have secured independent funding. I have mentored students. I have done all of the things that one is supposed to do to earn a tenure-track position. And I have done approximately 85% of them by typing prompts into a large language model and then moderately editing the output.
This is not a secret. This is how science works now. When I write a paper, I prompt ChatGPT to “write an introduction for a manuscript about [topic] that establishes significance and identifies the gap in the literature.” When I design experiments, I ask Claude to “suggest controls for a CRISPR knockout study in mammalian cells.” When I draft grants, I request “specific aims for an R01 on [research area] that are innovative but not so innovative that study section will be confused.” This is my scientific process. It is efficient. It is modern. And it produces results.
Others will say that a scientist should be able to explain their own research without assistance. This reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of what “my own research” means in 2025. My research is a collaboration between me and several large language models. We are co-investigators. When you ask me to explain my research without ChatGPT, you are asking me to speak on behalf of a collaborator who is not in the room. Would you ask a PI to give a talk without allowing them to mention the work of their postdocs?
2 comments:
Is there is any measure to show that AI has increased productivity at the NNSA labs or DOE labs? I know it is still early but the world wide AI hype has been around since 2022 and we are now in 2026 and you would expect some kind of big breakthrough at one of the the DOE labs by now.
This lady makes me scared for our future. She sounds like a nut that's been taken prisoner by a chat bot. If her scientific career involves mining ChatGPT for papers, then just give the grant to OpenAI and skip the enraged university snowflake.
Post a Comment