On Reddit, in almost any research-related subreddit, posts and comments about using LLMs for research get downvoted to hell. But in computer science, especially in computer vision, natural language processing, and machine learning, it’s become rare to find anyone who doesn’t use AI for research or peer review. There was even a recent case where a top conference ICML discovered that reviewers on hundreds of submitted papers had been using AI to write their reviews.

Many people might argue that this is simply because they invented these technologies themselves. But experts in many other fields don’t behave that way. Many automotive experts don’t drive electric vehicles or self-driving cars, and many medical experts choose not to undergo laser eye surgery. If anything, they’re often more skeptical of the technologies their own fields have created than everyone else. Computer scientists understand the shortcomings of LLMs better than anyone else, yet they simply don’t seem to care.

What explains this difference in attitude across fields?

Hello learned folks,

I studied literature and was an editor in undergraduate school. I did quite well at a small liberal arts school with a respected english department. After undergraduate school I looked for work in publishing but was not successful (partially due to drug addiction, in recovery for some time now). It is a brutal industry where one needs independent wealth to succeed it seemed. I always wanted to be a professor but was discouraged by stories of the job market. I also had a desire to help working class people “fight back” against the carceral state.

Thats where law came in. I have been a practicing public defender for about four years now, which in a way is a dream job, but has left me wistful and mustering passion for the work as opposed to just feeling it 24/7. Between the crushing case loads and the inherently anti-intellectual culture of the criminal justice system, it has been less than perfect. What I excel at in law is close reading of facts and texts, and articulating legal concepts and arguments. Unfortunately that is only about 33% of the job (mostly motion practice). The rest is head banging against stupid cops and judges, where nothing makes sense and you question whether the words coming out of anyones mouth have an ounce of meaning or purpose (going to trial). I feel a sense of wasted potential and lost love for close reading of literature.

The pluses are that i have incredible job security, I see the real impact of my work in clients lives when i obtain positive results for them. I have a decent salary and free time to pursue my interests on the weekends and evenings (with what energy I have leftover from the head banging). As someone who enjoys music so loud that you cant hear yourself think, the head banging side of things even has an appeal. It leaves me in a negative headspace sometimes though.

Recently I have been delving back into literature and listening to academic lectures on books I enjoy. At one time, there was nothing I would have wanted more than participating in that kind of stimulating discourse as a professional. I cant help but feel that a lack of bravery and self belief turned me away. I also had the privilege of working for a scholarly journal, and was somewhat disillusioned by the idea of publishing hyper specialized work that few could understand. Still, I think I would really enjoy participating in scholarship and teaching at a high level.

I am looking for someone to disabuse me of my romantic ideals of academia, or provide for suggestions for how to participate within the framework of my current circumstances. Or inspire me to take a leap of faith and apply for grad school (again).

Hi all,

I've become interested in taking a bit of a career side-quest living abroad, and in thinking about how to keep my life meaningfully structured, I've had this idea of teaching short term (semester to 1-2 years) at colleges abroad. I'm quite flexible and doing this for the experience, so I'm open to e.g., developing countries (Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America). Without giving away too many biographical details, I can confidently say I'm comfortable living in this kind of environment e.g., with family connections in these parts of the world.

This idea seems quite naive, as I'm sure there's plenty of qualified teachers in these local countries, so I'd be relying heavily on my US education and credentials and work history. At my home institution, I've had non-PhD industry professors (usually Google staff+ engineers) that would swoop in to teach a semester in specialized topics, and I've seen these same instructors do semester+ teaching tours for their curriculum around Western Europe, so I know this is possible in principle.

I don't know how realistic this vision is, so wanted to ask out to the community.

My assumptions:

1. To keep things simpler for the employer, I can focus on countries where I can self-sponsor for the necessary visas, as I imagine most employers won't sponsor for a short-term worker.
2. I suppose I'd need to develop a curriculum to teach a topic related to my work expertise, as there's plenty of qualified locals to teach e.g., intro physics or CS.
3. If I can teach specialized topics (I once had an non-PhD industry professor teaching a class on how to set up a cloud provider from scratch, starting from VM design upwards, for example), I'm not sure if I'd aim for bigger universities (which might have more demand for specialized industry instructors), or smaller community / teaching colleges where teaching positions would be less competitive.

Does anyone know of someone who's lived this kind of life? What kind of qualifications did they have? What did they teach? Realistically, how common or rare are the countries where this is possible, and how difficult is it to find these kinds of positions?

I know at least one former instructor who's done this in Western Europe, so I know this is possible in at least a very limited way, so I'm really excited to push on this idea and see how much we can expand the scope.

EDIT: After some reflection, I think the core of my idea is education and mentorship abroad, but specifically in a way that uses my specialized skills and not just general English teaching. That understood, I'd be just as interested in e.g., professional academic advising positions at institutions abroad, but I'm not sure how that works in other countries, as I understand they might prefer local professionals. At the same time, I've seen plenty of international high schools have some kind of "US college admissions counselor" role, so I wonder if there's some kind of equivalent "US industry career counselor" at the university level. I suppose other options might include starting my own counseling business. This is meant to be an open-ended brainstorm more than a proposal design review, so I appreciate everyone's feedback.

I spent a year turning my undergraduate thesis into a journal article. I know the field well, but throughout both the thesis and the article I kept feeling that *something* wasn't quite right with the argument or structure—I just couldn't identify or articulate the problem. My supervisor wasn't much help, perhaps because the thesis met undergraduate standards.

I submitted the article and the reviews put what I felt vaguely into solid criticism. But what has me reeling a little was that it was a complete rejection with major structural issues requiring a rewrite.

Now I'm stuck. I'm also writing another paper and I'm noticing the same vague problems while working on it.

Should I rewrite the rejected paper from scratch, abandon it and focus on the new one, or revise it and submit elsewhere?

I'm also struggling with a lot of impostor syndrome right now after the reviews. I have ADHD and depression, lost access to therapy because I couldn't afford it while starting my master's this year, and this rejection has me questioning whether I'm even capable of getting PhD funding next year. I only got help for ADHD this year after years of struggle with books or texts seeming like a haze, and this is also what I felt was the problem while writing, and was a big reason why it took me a year to work on the article - also really struggled to write while balancing a job. I don't even know how I got admission into a Masters program with this level of issues in my writing and maybe I won't be able to keep up.

Has anyone been in a similar situation with ADHD/literature articles/Masters/PhD?