Dan Ports3d ago
I have heard a couple stories lately about faculty trying to replace their PhD students with LLMs to do research, and I regret to inform these people:
1) you are bad people who have misunderstood the concept of graduate students entirely.
2) I guarantee you that your students have already replaced you with LLMs because they provide more effective advising.
Show threadShriram Krishnamurthi3d ago
@dan Hyperbole much?
Show threadDan Ports3d ago
@shriramk a bit, perhaps, but I have actually heard the profoundly bad take of "this is great, we won't need to deal with students anymore"
Show threadPatrick Lam 3d ago
@dan @shriramk That's the whole thing though. I'm reading a PhD thesis (defense next week) and part of it is that I provide comments to the student and hopefully they learn something. I would not want to do that for LLM text. Basically I kind of never want to read LLM text.
Show threadShriram Krishnamurthi3d ago
@va2lam @dan Aren't you reading Dan backwards?
Show threadPatrick Lam 
@shriramk @dan I can see the appeal of never having to read another PhD thesis. But educating PhD students is a key part of the job and results in more researchers in the future. I think that is consistent with Dan?
May 29 at 1:16amWeb
Show threadShriram Krishnamurthi2d ago

@va2lam @dan
I am 100% behind the idea that if you're a PhD advisor, or sit on a committee, you should be willing to read the dissertation yourself — or else don't serve in those roles.

They already know where to get an LLM's judgment. They asked for *yours*.

Show threadPatrick Lam 1d ago
@shriramk @dan oh. I see what you mean about reading Dan backwards. Communication is hard! You and I are currently talking about the evaluative/educator role of faculty in reading a thesis. Dan was talking about the worker bee role that some advisors think about their PhD students. My intended synthesis was: yes, and these roles of PhD students are intertwined.