I think it might be worthwhile to distinguish cases where LLMs came up with a novel insight on their own vs. were involved, but not solely responsible.
You wouldn’t credit Google for the breakthrough of a researcher who used Google when making a discovery, even if the discovery wouldn’t have happened without the Google searches. The discovery maybe also wouldn’t have happened without the eggs and toast the researcher had for breakfast.
“LLMs supply ample shallow thinking and memory while the humans supply the deep thinking” is a different and currently much more believable claim than “LLMs can do deep thinking to come up with novel insights on their own.”
In my view, you don’t get novel insights without deep thinking except extremely rarely by random, but you’re right to make sure the topic doesn’t shift without anyone noticing.
I think it might be worthwhile to distinguish cases where LLMs came up with a novel insight on their own vs. were involved, but not solely responsible.
You wouldn’t credit Google for the breakthrough of a researcher who used Google when making a discovery, even if the discovery wouldn’t have happened without the Google searches. The discovery maybe also wouldn’t have happened without the eggs and toast the researcher had for breakfast.
“LLMs supply ample shallow thinking and memory while the humans supply the deep thinking” is a different and currently much more believable claim than “LLMs can do deep thinking to come up with novel insights on their own.”
I agree, I just want to note if the goalposts are moving from “no novel insights” to “no deep thinking.”
In my view, you don’t get novel insights without deep thinking except extremely rarely by random, but you’re right to make sure the topic doesn’t shift without anyone noticing.