I’ve now heard from several early-career folks some variant on this statement regarding manuscripts they intend to publish as papers: “I give the AI all my notes and it gives me a draft that isn’t perfect, but it’s easier to massage that draft into publishable shape than it would be to write it myself.” I haven’t found the right time or the right words to tell them that the work the LLM is “saving” them is the very work that would make them better writers for having gone through it. To me, if you’ve already accepted that writing scientific papers (or writing almost anything, really) is going to be a big part of your career, using an LLM to do the dirty work is like taking an automobile jack to the gym to help you lift the weights. It both cases, it’s the hardest work, pushing the limits of what you thought you could do, that makes you stronger.

This is a pretty stark choice for people whose careers involve writing: do you want to train yourself to be an editor of LLM-generated text? Or do you want to learn how to think more clearly and express yourself better through the medium of writing?