My daughter berated me for using AI (the sentiment among youth is pretty negative, and it is easy to understand why), but I simply responded, "if I don't my peers still will, then we'll be living on the street." And it's true, I've 10x'd my real productivity as a scientist (for example, using llms to help me code one off scripts for data munging, automating our new preprocessing pipelines, etc, quickly generating bullet points for slides).
The trick though is learning how to prompt, and developing the sense that the LLM is stuck with the current prompt and needs another perspective. Funnily enough, the least amount of luck I've had is getting the LLM to write precisely enough for science (yay I still have a job), even without the confabulation, the nuance is lacking...that it's almost always faster for me to write it myself.
> My daughter berated me for using AI (the sentiment among youth is pretty negative, and it is easy to understand why)
I can’t relate. Currently in university. Everyone is thankful to God ChatGPT exists. I’d think it must be a joke, or your daughter somehow managed to live in a social circle which doesn’t yet adopted chatbots for school purposes.
The trick though is learning how to prompt, and developing the sense that the LLM is stuck with the current prompt and needs another perspective. Funnily enough, the least amount of luck I've had is getting the LLM to write precisely enough for science (yay I still have a job), even without the confabulation, the nuance is lacking...that it's almost always faster for me to write it myself.