On the use of ChatGPT in academia: a measured response

Almost exactly two years ago, I wrote what might charitably be called a think-piece on the use of ChatGPT in academia, or more specifically, my observations on the use of ChatGPT by a handful of my colleagues in the small niche of French cosmology which I inhabited at the time. On reflection, what I was reacting to was less the use of large language models (LLMs) in research, and more how I felt my colleagues were undervaluing or mistrusting their own creative output. I was writing from the rhetorically precarious position of someone who believes themselves to be creative, values their own creative abilities, and had, at that point, never used or interacted with an LLM in any way, shape or form.

I never claimed to present an unbiased perspective (as I feel is my right, writing on a website of which the domain is my own name), but with the benefit of two years’ hindsight, what comes across to me most strongly is the emotion behind my words, rather than the presence of any well thought-out argument. With this current post, I aim to summarise my opinions about LLM use in a slightly more measured way, and discuss how and why they have changed since that original post.

Note: Since I used a large number of footnotes and some references, I found it more convenient to use LaTeX to typeset this post. You can find the pdf embedded below, and it is also available to download.