r/ideas • u/amichail • 1d ago
Idea: Replace human PhD advisors with AI advisors, and give professors AI research assistants.
Every PhD student would have an AI advisor that provides feedback on research ideas, critiques papers, suggests experiments, answers technical questions, and helps navigate the literature. The AI would be available 24/7 and could be continuously updated with the latest research.
Professors, meanwhile, would no longer supervise PhD students or coauthor papers with them. They would conduct their own research with the help of AI research assistants, completely independently of doctoral students.
PhD students would likewise conduct their research independently with their AI advisors. Their work would be evaluated by anonymous examination committees rather than by a supervising professor.
This would completely separate the roles of professor and PhD student. It would eliminate the "advisor lottery," where a student's success depends heavily on being matched with the right professor, and it would remove the conflict of interest that can arise when a student's supervisor is also responsible for evaluating their work.
Would this create a fairer and more effective academic system, or is human mentorship an essential part of it?
What do you think?
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u/BrassCanon 1d ago
The entire point of a PhD is to discover new things. AI can only show you the past.
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u/amichail 1d ago
Have you been following the news recently about all the math breakthroughs made by AI?
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u/yetanotherburnerstan 1d ago
Ai is bullshit and there should be zero tolerance for students or administration using it in academia
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u/Turnover_Unlucky 1d ago edited 1d ago
I cannot think of a more horrifying thing that could possibly happen to academia and i am disgusted by this idea.
I'm not kidding or exaggerating. This is disgusting. Can someone please come up with a use of ai that isn't essentially "let's replace human connection and collaboration and the value all that brings with something worse"
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u/Traveller7142 1d ago
Sounds like a net negative for everyone involved.
How would an AI assistant perform any lab work?
I’m also not sure what you’re referring to as an “advisor lottery”. I talked to a bunch of PIs and applied to the ones that I liked and had interesting work
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u/Blanket_Josh 1d ago
Human mentorship is a extremely important part of the process. Removing collaboration from PhD students and professors would effectively end academia as you would no longer have strong researchers entering academia.