AI is killing cold outreach: professor gets 75 PhD inquiries months before Fall 2027 cycle
aran_nayebi · x · 2026-09-17
Arvind Narayanan says AI is destroying cold outreach: months before the Fall 2027 PhD admissions cycle he's already received 75 inquiries, expecting exponential growth until December — just one of 10-15 categories of unsolicited email he gets. Worse, a company called iLands lets people run unmonitored agents, spawning a new wave of spam and attempted extortion. Prof. Graham Neubig adds two tips for students: follow the professor's preferred outreach method on their page (90% don't), and hand-write messages genuinely — "we can tell."
Related event: AI-generated cold emails flood professors before PhD season(3 posts)→
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