Eytan Adar, at Medium: "The reason why something ends up in a journal (or museum) has to do with what is currently acceptable in the market of ideas. For science, what goes into a journal depends very much on novelty but also what constitutes a 'publishable unit' [...] at a particular point in time.
For various reasons, science is incentivized not just by doing something new but also by doing something difficult. As technology makes things easier, our papers change in reaction. This leads to broad changes — across many domains — in response to GenAI.
[...]
The challenge for the AI-native PhD student is that they have learned to perform the research act for what constitutes a publishable unit today. They are not thinking about how to adapt their domain’s production in new ways. GenAI has made their work cheaper and easier. It’s the work they observe everyone around them doing and seek to emulate — just, you know, without putting in the work. The inclination, for those who treat research as a mechanical process, is simply to slot in GenAI components as a replacement for those things they don’t know or find tedious. They understand the process as a set of black boxes that GenAI can use with specific inputs and a very specific kind of production unit. Ultimately, this puts the AI-native at a disadvantage as their discipline’s research norms and expectations change.
Keeping up with changes may require a deeper understanding of the research process. But leading this change will require that understanding. Being able to lead requires extending thinking outside of current norms or paradigms. What should be clear is that significant success will depend on doing more than others can achieve with readily available tools (e.g., GenAI). [...] [W]hat constitutes an intellectually meaningful and worthwhile publication unit will change. In biology, I suspect that many things that would have earned you a paper in the past are now just a sub-publishable piece that gets tossed in to one of the 100s of biology databases (which then feed into many of the new methods). Students who are not well trained will find it difficult to adapt to these changes. They will certainly find it difficult to become leaders for their communities."