ML engineer: ChatGPT could few-shot my PhD dissertation — so what would I research now?
chrisalbon · x · 2026-10-12
- chrisalbon recalls realizing two years ago that ChatGPT could few-shot large chunks of his PhD dissertation, and mourning his years of work for a few days.
- His regret shifted over time: with ChatGPT during his PhD, he could have tackled a far bigger, more important, more technically difficult question.
- With tools like Codex, he imagines writing a dissertation an AI couldn't few-shot and he couldn't pull off without AI — AI raises the ceiling of what questions are worth asking.
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