Generative artificial intelligence (AI) raises valid concerns about the loss of cognitive work embedded in scholarly writing. However, universally dismissing AI-assisted drafting mistakenly conflates writing with thinking itself and reinforces existing inequities in who can transform their ideas into polished text. Academic authorship should depend more on the depth and creativity of human intellectual engagement than on the medium through which first drafts are produced.
From bench to bot: Why AI-powered writing may not deliver on its promise
Efficiency isn’t everything. The cognitive work of struggling with prose may be a crucial part of what drives scientific progress.
StoryScope: Investigating idiosyncrasies in AI fiction
As AI-generated fiction becomes increasingly prevalent, questions of authorship and originality are becoming central to how written work is evaluated. While most existing work in this space...
Journal investigating paper on cognitive impact of generative AI
A paper about the effects of generative AI use on confidence in work tasks is under investigation after critics raised questions about the study design, data analysis and ethics approval for the re…
Wherein I Find Myself Writing About Writing
Most everyone finds writing to be challenging (especially those who say they enjoy it). This is because writing is an intentional, thoughtful act. This is as it should be, but “AI” has recently exacerbated the misbelief that writing is simply an output. In fact, it's a creative process that has merit in and of itself.
Guest Post - The Perils of Using Generative AI to Perform Research Tasks: Editors’ and Publishers’ Viewpoints - The Scholarly Kitchen
Today's guest post offers a review of a panel of publishers and editors discussing the pros and cons of using Generative AI, along with ethical and policy implications.
Brian D. Earp, Ph.D. on Twitter / X
"Writing is thinking." This phrase went viral recently (from https://t.co/EQqohfhUMd), often quoted in the context of objections to use of AI in drafting academic prose. In Nature Reviews Bioengineering we respond: "Thinking is not only writing." Preview below. Shareable full… pic.twitter.com/cZtGdoSwqV— Brian D. Earp, Ph.D. (@briandavidearp) May 15, 2026
Writing With AI Is Harder Than You Think
It takes rigor, judgment, and willingness to be told your work isn't good enough.
Writing With and Beyond AI: Fieldnotes from Computer-Mediated Poetry
Apr 10, 2026, 12:15 pm - Large language models can make writing mind-numbingly efficient — but the point of writing with AI should be to write what we couldn’t have written alone (without generating bland, derivative “slop”).
Writing Is Thinking
When you write about your work, it makes all of us smarter for the effort, including you. Done well, this kind of sharing means you’re contributing signal, instead of noise. But writers are made, n…
The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Reported Reductions in Cognitive Effort and Confidence Effects From a Survey of Knowledge Workers
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The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Reported Reductions in Cognitive Effort and Confidence Effects From a Survey of Knowledge Workers
As part of the Digital Library's transition to Open Access, new features for researchers are available in the Premium Edition. Click here to learn more.
How Heavily Are PhD Students Offloading Their Scientific Writing to AI? Evidence from US STEM PhD Dissertations
Large language models are diffusing rapidly into science, raising concerns that delegating research writing to AI may undermine the development of expertise that scientific training is supposed to build. We measure AI-generated writing in the dissertations of a near-census of US STEM PhD graduates from 2019 to 2026 and link graduates to their subsequent employment. AI writing is absent before 2023, present in 29% of dissertations filed in 2026, and rapidly growing. Use is more common among students from non-English-speaking countries and at lower-ranked programs. Among graduates in the same program and cohort, those whose dissertations contain AI writing are less likely to enter academic research careers and more likely to enter non-tenure-track roles or industry, with this pattern strongest among US-origin students. At the same time as AI may increase research productivity, it thus appears to also be displacing a potentially important portion of the work through which scientific expertise is developed.
The Impact of Generative AI on Critical Thinking: Self-Reported Reductions in Cognitive Effort and Confidence Effects From a Survey of Knowledge Workers
The rise of Generative AI (GenAI) in knowledge workflows raises questions about its impact on critical thinking skills and practices. We survey 319 knowledge workers to investigate 1) when and how they perceive the enaction of critical thinking when using GenAI, and 2) when and why GenAI affects their effort to do so. Participants shared […]
Writing is Thinking: Learning to Write with Confidence
Learning to write is learning to think, because writing is thinking. They are two peas in a powerful pod. This article goes over my writing process, focused on minimizing the activation energy to get started.
Writers Who Use AI Are Not Real Writers
Dorothy Parker famously (but probably not really) said, “I hate to write, but I love having written,” which is a sentiment I don’t largely understand or agree with in the broader …
“The task that generative A.I. has been most successful at is lowering our expectations, both of the things we read and of ourselves when we write anything for others to read.” — Ted Chiang
Why A.I. Isn’t Going to Make Art
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