Estimate: 30K AI PhD Students Produce ~30K Papers a Year, One per Student

SoloGen · x · 2026-09-23

Replying to Elliot Creager, author SoloGen runs a back-of-envelope estimate: with 30K AI/ML PhD students and assuming 50% of all AI/ML research output involves a PhD student, at an estimated 5K new papers per month, 0.5 × 5K × 12 = 30K papers/year — equivalent to one sole paper per student.

Related event: Estimate: 30K AI PhD Students Produce Roughly 30K Papers Per Year(2 posts)→

Original post →

More from Research

Research channel →