Dear Reader,

Last week, I made a post on using AI for academic writing, which enraged the community like nothing I have ever written.

4 Million views & about 400 hate comments.

A dozen people even took the time to reach out to the dean of my university & my supervisors (yet none to me personally).

I don't think even 1% read past the hook ("I wrote 4000 words for my thesis with AI") and ignored that the basis for the entire process were my own papers, the workflow included deep-reading & note-taking as a key component and that the result consisted predominantly of sorted bullet points to find relevant papers.

This alerted me to a much bigger problem: "Using AI means something different to everyone". That is why the question about it is so inflammatory - we are talking apples and oranges.

This week, I made a video explaining exactly what I mean by using AI and which parts of it are ethical, based on definitions I found.

The main idea I developed is that we first need to break down AI use into categories: (1)Generate Ideas, (2) build understanding, (3) write a paper, and (4) polish writing. Each permits a different level of AI, and each has implications for your academic career. But ultimately in the long run, AI is a levelling technology that has the potential to make hard intellectual labour obsolete, just like electricity or the combustion engine replaced the need for hard manual labour.

(It's one of my first YouTube videos, I'd appreciate it if you subscribed & liked it, if you find it useful.)

Wishing you a wonderful weekend,

​
Ilya Shabanov, The Effortless Academic​