The Age of Academic Slop is Upon Us

what happens when AI automates "normal science"?

AI as the Catalyst of the New Paradigm of Science? | Cadmus Journal

The rapid advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is reshaping the landscape of scientific inquiry. This article examines the challenges confronting modern science, including knowledge fragmentation, diminishing returns of current paradigms, and the disconnect between science and society. It explores how AI offers solutions enhancing collaboration and integrating knowledge—as well as considers the possible “darker side” of using AI in research. However, the advent of AI in science not only enhances scientific research but also redefines the role of human researchers and fosters a new paradigm of human understanding. By embracing these transformations, a more cohesive and responsive scientific enterprise can emerge.

A golden age of science is coming

AI can do things humans researchers can’t, even in groups.

70 years of AI hype

Quoting from Olivia Guest et al. (2025) "Against the Uncritical Adoption of AI Technologies in Academia."

On the Value of Doing a PhD in the Age of AI

Many students who are just now embarking on a PhD in AI are understandably anxious. It feels like our field is zooming forward ever faster. Our clever methods are often surpassed before they are published. Our deep insights seem less critical to frontier lab progress. AI is automating aspects of the research process that used to require years of specialized training.

Science that Compounds: The Need for A New Substrate for Research in the Age of AI

This paper is a perspective from Lightcone Research, an open-source initiative building tooling for scientific research in the age of agentic AI.

Deep Research, information vs. insight, and the nature of science

What AI will accelerate in the scientific process, what it cannot do, and how we can prepare for new manners of scientific investigation.

Which ‘AI scientist’ suits your lab? A guide for the perplexed

General-purpose AI tools for science, such as Claude Science, promise to accelerate research. But which is right for you?

How to build an AI scientist: first peer-reviewed paper spills the secrets

AI Scientist, an autonomous research tool, first released in 2024, has now undergone peer review, highlighting its strengths and limitations.

The end of the age of heroes

AI will soon be better at math than any human. What does that mean?

AI is not superhuman

What metaphor should drive the field of AI research?

Charting AI’s Role in Scientific Discovery — Renaissance Philanthropy – A brighter future for all through science, technology, and innovation

Renaissance Philanthropy, with support from Google.org , is conducting a landscape study of AI integration in scientific research — and we want your perspective.

Field Theory: AI as Social Science Question, Object & Tool

Uses of advanced artificial intelligence are changing how societies organize labor, govern, produce knowledge, and make meaning. In light of these developments, this essay argues that AI models, tools, and systems pose three interrelated imperatives for social science: they demand renewed attention to social theories of how technology, human experience, and social order are entangled; they require study as objects of inquiry in their own right; and they offer capabilities that may transform—or upend—the practice of social investigation itself. From Weber’s analysis of rationalization to Du Bois’s study of technology and inequality to contemporary scholarship on algorithmic governance, the essay examines what social science distinctively offers: the capacity to historicize the apparently unprecedented, to trace connections across scales, and to center those most affected by technological change. It identifies how algorithmic systems are remaking the distribution of opportunity and risk as a central task of social inquiry and asks what futures social science might help bring into being.

No. 008: AI co-mathematician, compiler-verified protocols, open infrastructure bets - The Hallway Track

The Hallway Track No. 008 - How AI is affecting the practice of science

A history of definitions of powerful AI

I made this timeline as supporting research for this essay: AGI (disambiguation). Excerpted: