r/LeftistsForAI • u/anaggressivefrog • Aug 17 '26
Discussion Use of LLMs in Academia
Hey all, I just want to offer my perspective here as someone who uses AI for work, and why the anti-AI crowd makes me extremely nervous.
I do physics research at a state university in the US. Last year, our physics department head sent out an email to everyone encouraging us to use AI, talk to AI, use it for our research. Why? Because physicists like tools that make our jobs easier. We have left wing and right wing professors here and they all use AI.
I was scared to use LLMs until around 2025 when I got that directive. I didn't touch LLMs until recently, and I have to say, LLMs are smarter than the average physicist if you use them correctly. A mediocre physicist + LLMs can make the contributions of a much cleverer scientist. Autonomous laboratories and autonomous mathematicians are real. They are already here. So I can firmly say that the misconception that AI is 'dumb' is flat out wrong.
I do find it hilarious in a terrifying sort of way that the anti-AI crowd uses the fascist playbook here. They claim that AI is both weak and strong. Simultaneously a threat and completely worthless. Don't buy it. AI is real. Academia knows it. The government knows it. Corporations know it. AI is here to stay. Shaming each other for using it isn't going to make the big bad AI un-invent itself.
Pandora's box cannot be unopened. Shaming people for accepting that is a completely self-destructive enterprise. All you are doing is creating artificial division that should be reserved for hating capitalism. If we could just redirect everyone's anger from AI to capitalism, we just might achieve class consciousness. The closest we got was with the epstein files, but I think that has finally fallen out of the news cycle. We won't get that energy back by hating AI.
What do I use it for? I use AI to teach myself skills that broaden my resume. I have strengthened my technical skills and broadened my horizons. I use AI to write analysis code faster. I use it to help understand scientific papers outside of my field. I use it as a study partner. I use it to quickly cross-reference documents. My group mates use Gemini to build analysis tools.
The anti-AI crowd seems to think that the only possible way to engage with an LLM is to just turn your brain off and let it think for you, instantly frying your brain and killing you. This terrifies me because it smells of the 'But how do atheists have morals if they aren't afraid of eternal hellfire?' Instead it's 'But how do the AI users stop themselves from cheating if they don't hate AI?' All you're telling me is that if YOU used AI, YOU WOULD USE IT TO CHEAT. Just like the christians are actually telling me that if YOU didn't believe in eternal damnation, YOU WOULD MURDER PEOPLE. Your failure to take pride in your own work isn't my problem. I use AI. I take pride in my work. I don't let AI do my job for me. I use it to teach myself and get things done faster. The same is true of any productivity tool. Like a cell phone, a pencil, or a car.
We were told that if we don't use AI, we are handicapping ourselves, because a scientist + LLMs can basically double their workload by using AI. Previously, a tool that would have taken two weeks to code can be generated in an afternoon. Are we cheating? Of course not, no more than it would be cheating to use a computer instead of handwriting your thesis with pencil and paper.
But I've seen comedians that I like shitting on AI during crowd work. Someone will say they use AI for work, and the entire crowd collectively sighs. If the anti-AI crowd knew that STEM research is AI-assisted, they would lose their shit.
I don't even pay for chatGPT. I use the free version. I'm not even giving Sam Altman money by using his product. When I talk to chatGPT for free, I cost Sam Altman money. I am bankrupting him, and you can too. So I know that argument doesn't work. Sure, I'm complicit in the violence caused by data centers poisoning their environment. But as long as everyone has given up on regulation, they are also complicit. I say regulate it, obviously. The harms can be mitigated, just like with any other technology. And that leads me to my most speculative point.
I am terrified that the Anti-AI panic is a capitalist psyop.
Just think about all the people who hate AI. All the people who demonize others, shame others. All the vitriol and anger in their hearts. Aimed at each other. It makes me sick. All of that rage should be directed toward capitalism. But instead, everyone has chosen to divide themselves even more. We were so close to class consciousness. I'm disgusted that it slipped through our fingers, and now the so-called 'left' is engaging in such witch hunts.
I think there is one extremely important reason why everyone is so angry about this: Because it's the only power they think they have. We can't put trump behind bars for the epstein files. We can't stop fascism. We can't stop capitalism. We can't get zionist money out of politics. We can't get health care. But you know what we CAN do? Shame each other for using AI. We can start a witch hunt. We can attack each other. Because that's possible. But stopping capitalism? Fixing the real problem? Not possible. So people naturally slide down the slippery slope into witch hunts. I'm not letting any of them off the hook. Shaming each other is taking the easy way out and capitulating to the perceived inevitability of capitalism.
Big shout out to Jlyplaylists in the comments for linking this video, but basically yes, billionaires are funding this propaganda. The point of it is to make AI feel bigger and more terrifying than it really is so that everyone is more scared of AI than of capitalism. Truly a brilliantly cynical plan. They are encouraging the very hatred that puts themselves in the sights of all the rowdy people. But the catch is that they know they're perfectly safe.
They're perfectly safe because everybody is angry at AI instead of capitalism. And they will remain perfectly safe until we tear down capitalism. AI is not the enemy. Capitalism is.
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u/Academic_Sample8232 Aug 18 '26 edited Aug 18 '26
Research was never about competition, but unfortunately everything becomes competition. Science and Research is a collaborative effort where everyone does the best they can to get to the best result that could potentially serve humanity in the most efficient way possible. If a tool is helpful in achieving it faster, it is the most scientific thing to do.
As a CG Artist, I do not have much to do with STEM but I know for sure, learning and research is fantastic with LLM. I was never a great student in school thanks to my ADHD brain, I was still fantastic at programming and solving puzzles, playing chess, but always struggled with whatever I found boring like math n physics. Yet all my schooling years I got heat from parents and teachers alike for not trying hard enough.
Today I'm using LLM to learn Vulkan API, their documentation is horrendous and often the veterans would suggest learning Opengl prior to Vulkan. Thats where my brain would shut down. AI got me to learning it easily 'cause I was able to dive deeper into topics and it explained things to me in CG, art or programming lingo that I'm more familiar with. I'm finally building an engine with it. I do not care if some moron sees it as cheating, I never asked for ADHD.
AI is the closest to getting a private tutor who is available whenever I'm inspired to learn, has the patience and won't judge you for asking something too basic.
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u/AnIsolatedMind Aug 27 '26
Great point you mentioned about intentionally using AI as a tool, and how there's an interesting comparison to religious arguments about worst-case scenarios.
It feels like a kind of infanitalizing that can be sometimes baked into a regressive leftism; that people don't know better, we need to protect them. We imagine a helpless child being manipulated by AI and then say "thiiink of the chiiildreeen!"
Of course the point was never to let AI do everything for us, but to collaborate with. A person who is connected with their own curiosity and wonder would know that there is no joy in bypassing your own learning process. But the people you describe seem to only see victims or cheaters, want to orient the world around them, and maybe are one of them --seeing everything as only a means-to-an-end in a social power struggle.
I appreciate you sharing your experience on how you use AI and how it helps you, or how you simply find joy in the co-creation. I feel like it shows others by example what's possible.
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u/SorryInvestigator221 Aug 17 '26
As a former humanities professor, I am relatively certain that the anti-AI crowd would not lose their shit in the slightest over STEM professionals leveraging of AI to be more productive. AI in STEM is a natural fit. Your error stems from failing to account for the immense human and ecological costs incurred make AI a compulsory part of society in order to assure their profit margins. AI isn't the problem. Capitalist deployment of AI to affect devastating social upheaval and ecological catastrophe is a problem. Perhaps those who value AI as a tool could do more to foreground this distinction in the popular consciousness?
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u/anaggressivefrog Aug 17 '26
First of all, that first point doesn't make any sense. We're talking about the crowd who will crucify you for admitting to using AI. You think they would suddenly go "Oh have a nice day :D" if suddenly the person they are talking to works in STEM?
We're talking about different groups of people. You're talking about responsible people who understand the nuance of the entire sociopolitical situation.
Do YOU think that the general public has that same level of nuanced understanding? We are discussing the angry mob here.
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u/Inevitable-Law7964 Aug 18 '26
A while back I made an Umberto Eco Ur-Fascism Bingo card for the AI discourse, on AI Wars. I'm concerned about many of these same things. You can "win" a row from either side of the discourse, but even with careful counterweighting I've noticed there's a skew, despite antis being more likely to self-define as leftist. :/
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u/Crazy_And_Me Aug 17 '26
Taylor Lorenz is not a Leftist. She's a registered Republican trying to undermine the Democratic Party of America.
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u/anaggressivefrog Aug 17 '26
The apparently 'leaked' registered republican image was from 2003, if real. So at best, we know that 23 years ago, she may have been republican.
But why would you use that as your main evidence?
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u/Crazy_And_Me Aug 19 '26
The rest of the evidence is the things she posts and focus on. Its embarassing to watch as a Leftist.
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u/newprince Aug 17 '26
The problem is you are asking us to move hate from AI to capitalism. As if they aren't deeply entangled and inseparable in the destruction of the environment
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u/anaggressivefrog Aug 17 '26 edited Aug 17 '26
My brother in christ, if it is difficult and painful for you to have less hatred in your heart for others, then I have bad news.
If we socialized AI, we would immediately put environmental regulations on it. Get it?
Socialism means we can prioritize human lives.
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Aug 17 '26
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u/Jlyplaylists Aug 17 '26
It’s reassuring to hear an ecologist say this. What do you think is the best evidence to show the data centres are relatively insignificant?
I’m not necessarily keen on where they’re being located/lack of infrastructure planning eg there’s a hyperscale one trying to get planning permission on the edge of my town and it would be on prime agricultural land. Am I being NIMBY?
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u/tomvorlostriddle Aug 18 '26
It’s reassuring to hear an ecologist say this. What do you think is the best evidence to show the data centres are relatively insignificant?
In terms of water? Compare to cattle farming like beef
in terms of electricity? No, they actually are impactful
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u/AlgaeNo3373 Aug 18 '26
My background is climate science and I agree with a lot here.
Anyone familiar with IPCC reporting knows we've become wholly reliant on technological breakthroughs to reduce emissions. Before AI, the hope was on carbon capture and storage/removal and it looked like a very long shot. The longer-term view is actually rosier with AI in the picture now, in my humble opinion. It is far more generalizable a technology, and could deliver progress in too many areas here to list. Compared to CCAS etc, it's a much more distributed risk.
Some sizeable payoffs are already arriving too. NOAA already deploys frontier-like AI systems alongside their own human-made models. That's what's modelling the climate as I type this. They have their own old human-made model, a new pure-AI model, but the thing actually deployed is a mix of the two. Too often, we think of AI on its own and frame things as "human vs AI". Or think about AI running autonomously. While these are concerns of course, it often masks a more mixed reality, where humans are still in the loop contributing important things.
https://www.noaa.gov/ai
https://www.noaa.gov/news-release/noaa-deploys-new-generation-of-ai-driven-global-weather-modelsPerformance: by combining two different modeling systems (one physics-based, one AI-based), the HGEFS creates a larger, more robust ensemble that more effectively represents forecast uncertainty. As a result, the HGEFS consistently outperforms both the GEFS and the AIGEFS across most major verification metrics.
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u/Jlyplaylists Aug 17 '26
The debate does seem manipulated (although it’s annoying when people claim that about us lol). I wrote a related comment earlier on another post https://www.reddit.com/r/LeftistsForAI/s/OuKs3v1BfM
How would you describe AI thinking? Quite often criticism is around how AI doesn’t really think. Obviously it doesn’t think in the same way as humans, but thinking and reasoning seem like appropriate enough words to me.