Sociologist warns AI-optimized papers could erase exploratory thinking in social science

RobbWiller · x · 2026-10-24

Stanford sociologist Robb Willer, quoting Brendan Nyhan's piece, argues that if AI streamlines social science papers into maximally 'technically correct' and faster outputs, the aesthetic, exploratory, speculative, and deliberately vague writing many scholars rely on would be lost. He calls for thinking about how to preserve these non-optimizable academic values in an AI era.

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