The Future of Research in the Age of AI: scarcity shifts to judgment, not execution
_akpiper · x · 2026-10-12
INRIA researcher Pierre Marion's essay argues that as LLMs accelerate computation, coding, literature search and experiments by 10-100x, the scarce resources in science shift to problem selection, modeling, and judging value.
Key points:
- LLMs have surpassed IMO-level math and begun solving major conjectures, triggering an automation crisis feeling in mathematics.
- Time saved by AI spent on publishing more papers only accelerates publish-or-perish to a breaking point; paper counts and h-index are losing meaning.
- The way out: let AI expand the exploration space and reserve human time for judgment, taste, understanding, and mentoring — future research skill is commanding a very fast AI research team.
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