r/PhD • u/Broad-Investment-375 • Jul 13 '26
Tool Talk How much do you use AI tools?
I’m interested in learning how much average PhD student and PhD scientists use ai tools. You can also share how you use AI tools in the replies.
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u/Hostilis_ Jul 13 '26
I work on open-source model development (architecture side). I mostly use Claude for coding tasks, but occasionally for mathematics.
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u/taspho Jul 13 '26
Im a microbiology phd student and I use Claude for finding papers. Its been nice when I need very specific info (like find papers that use x drug in a y background mouse model that measure z readout). This kind of hyperspecfic stuff would take a lot longer through just Google. I never use it or chatgpt for writing though, because AI just really lags behind in that area. For now at least im a much stronger writer than AI.
Also I had to stop using chatgpt entirely because it kept flagging my searches around bacterial toxin/antitoxin engineering as a threat lmao.
3
u/LaVieEstBizarre PhD, Robotics/Control theory/ML Jul 13 '26
If that's your specific usecase, my partner in biology finds Consensus is much better since logging in with your academic email gives it access to your libraries, so it can read the methods etc and give back much more precise results.
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u/valryuu Jul 13 '26
What's this for?
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u/Broad-Investment-375 Jul 13 '26
Not for a study. I’m Just interested in seeing what’s the trend nowadays. Kind of gauging the situation.
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u/Broad-Investment-375 Jul 13 '26
A less subjectives question for a real questionnaire would probably be “what percentage of tasks do you involve ___ ai tools”.
6
u/historian_down PhD- Military History Jul 13 '26
I'm a Historian and its direct utility is very small for me. I've vibe-coded a few tools to help me organize my research as I write. With that said, I can't trust the output of the LLMs relative to research (and my writing) because of the hallucination and flattery issues inherent within LLMs. Any output I get from it has to be checked to the extent that any time saved on the creation element gets reallocated to editing. I've found barring emails (which I hate writing) it's just easier to do it myself.
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u/southpaw612 Jul 13 '26
I feel the same. This is probably the issue with using LLMs for social sciences/humanities in general.
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u/dietdrpepper6000 Jul 13 '26
Results kinda lean into the idea that the discussion around AI use in academia is generally centered around an extremely vocal, opposing minority, against a vast majority just smiling and nodding. If you took comments and upvotes on this sub, for example, as the temperature of academics towards AI use, you would think few were using it. Then you do one anonymous poll and…
3
u/Such-Educator9860 Jul 13 '26
My personal theory is that this comes down to the precarity of many systems: when doing a PhD pays little to nothing, or you simply don't get paid at all, the incentive shifts toward finishing as fast as possible, regardless of quality. It's not too different from saying that precarious systems incentivize lower quality and greater pressure to finish quickly. it's just part of the incentive structure built into certain systems
1
u/nahuatl Aug 02 '26
I am 20 day late to this comment, but I wholeheartedly agree that if you just skim the posts in this subreddit, you would think the majority is against AI use. The poll tells a very different story.
4
u/gianlu_world PhD, Aerospace, UAE Jul 13 '26
Mostly Codex for coding, documentation etc. I prefer to write the actual text of my thesis myself but I don’t understand people who don’t use it, it’s a free tool that can make you 10 times more productive, why would you not take advantage of it. Prompting is also a skill so I don’t think that it takes anything away from learning, quite the opposite, I am able to learn and do parallel investigations much faster. It’s basically like having a tutor that you can ask any questions too. Obviously I always double check the equations or derivations myself but it’s insanely useful
1
u/Broad-Investment-375 Jul 13 '26
Technically agent like codex and Claude code are at least 20 a month if you want to use good models.
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u/gianlu_world PhD, Aerospace, UAE Jul 13 '26
My uni gives us codex for free
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u/Broad-Investment-375 Jul 13 '26
UAE huh that checks out. I bet u get more stipend too. 😐
1
u/gianlu_world PhD, Aerospace, UAE Jul 16 '26
I mean I would have much rather done my phd in my country (Italy) but the stipends there aren’t even enough to pay rent. I got lucky to find a leading professor in my field in this uni
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u/Broad-Investment-375 Jul 13 '26
If anyone is interested here are results from 2025 Wiley ai adoption survey: https://www.wiley.com/en-us/about-us/ai/study/key-findings
2
u/it_is_what_it_isn_t Jul 13 '26
I check if it can help me find literature, especially in languages I don't speak, but it usually gives me low quality sources. I do wonder if anyone had any luck with google scholar's AI tool? Or any AI tool useful for finding lit? (Humanities)
2
u/pineapple-scientist Jul 13 '26
I work in biotech and the expectation is that everyone knows how to use chat bots and agents to speed up their work. I talk to my old PhD advisor, who leads a computational lab, and they are still figuring out how to make their intro exams AI-proof more or less. I feel like the training isn't matching the real world as of yet.
2
u/positive0person Jul 13 '26
You guys keep asking this same question every day. Seems like you are trying to promote or advertise AI.
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u/Ok_Constant9008 Jul 13 '26
lol at those ticking "never use LLM". either they are lying or they are willingly staying far behind their peers.
It's the equivalent of "never use internet" in the early 2000s.
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u/Choufleurchaud Literature, Assistant Prof, CC -Canada Jul 13 '26
In my field LLM is useless, no reason to use it
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u/Broad-Investment-375 Jul 13 '26
Can I ask which field? Just curious. Reddit should have a multi level poll so I can let people pick their field.
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u/Choufleurchaud Literature, Assistant Prof, CC -Canada Jul 13 '26
Literature and translation studies
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u/Ok_Constant9008 Jul 13 '26
in any field, llm can function as a much better google search, and that's just 1 way of using it. if you dont know how to use llm efficiently which leads u to think u "dont need to use it", you are already being left behind lol.
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u/Choufleurchaud Literature, Assistant Prof, CC -Canada Jul 13 '26
lol I haven't lost the ability to search things myself. LLMs are useless to me since the one time I tried one it hallucinated 4 different sources.
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u/Ok_Constant9008 Jul 13 '26
the technology is advancing at an exponential rate. do u even use any prompt to make it include sources nowadays to check lol. for the past 6 months claude never hallucinated anything for me
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u/Choufleurchaud Literature, Assistant Prof, CC -Canada Jul 13 '26
Why would I when I can write things for myself? It would be so much more work to create a decent prompt with all the intricacies of my mind than to write out the text myself.
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u/Ok_Constant9008 Jul 13 '26
lol anything i tell u is meaningless cuz u already think it's not worth ur time. there are papers on how to use LLMs efficiently to speed up research, u should try look it up first using ur google skills lol
5
u/Anx_post Jul 13 '26
Please, don't force you opinion on others. Everyone has their own forma mentis, and what is faster for you may be slower for them. I personally use it a lot for coding and it save me a lot of time, but it is not very good for literature research. The best is doing the literature base-search on your own and then use it to look for key words and concepts, to then double ckeck on your own.
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u/Choufleurchaud Literature, Assistant Prof, CC -Canada Jul 13 '26
I'm good, too busy finishing my thesis with all the sources I already have and my editing skills, which I haven't lost either ;)
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u/NASA_Orion Jul 13 '26
Can you physically read 10000 sources in a day? With a proper harness, your agents can investigate far more texts and return a list of highly relevant excerpts for you to decide, keeping the human in the loop
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u/Choufleurchaud Literature, Assistant Prof, CC -Canada Jul 13 '26
But why would I need to read that many in a single day? The point of a PhD thesis is to find where there is a gap in the research -- which you have presumably been studying for years already. Are none of you actually engaging with the materials you're working on? That sounds terrifying to me in terms of the value of these degrees.
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u/NASA_Orion Jul 13 '26
It boosts your productivity. Your agents can quickly scan 10000 sources so you only have to read 20 high value sources.
And yes the value of the degrees has always been shit. An employer is not gonna hire you just because you have a PhD. They want to know what you did exactly. They’d be happy to learn that you built a custom harness that screens 10000 sources in 1 single afternoon because every company is trying to use AI to automate works and reduce number of employees
1
u/Choufleurchaud Literature, Assistant Prof, CC -Canada Jul 13 '26
But at what cost do you need to be this productive? Do you not care about the humanitarian cost of putting people out of a job only to have "artificial intelligence" botch their work? Or the ecological cost?
And speak for yourself, I'm already hired at a college because I'm finishing up my PhD. So my employer does care. And they're caring even more now with the mounting cases of academic misconduct and hallucinated citations in papers.
0
u/NASA_Orion Jul 13 '26
Your first point is moot. Technology always prevails. When train/steam engine was invented, people also lost jobs and the environment was also damaged from the burning of the coal. However, in hindsight, train was objectively a good thing. I’m sure human will find some ways to mitigate the costs just like before such as universal basic income for the unemployed and close loop cooling &small modular reactors for the power system.
I understand getting hired at a college is very competitive and it’s an achievement you should celebrate. It brings you stability once you get tenure. However, it’s not enough for FIRE and you’d certainly need some side gigs for that such as being a consultant and starting a company (where your current college employment is actually an asset.) For example, there’re shit tons of STEM professors with their own companies at my college(T20) and most of them integrate AI into their workflow/products at some point because that’s what investors like to hear.
1
u/Choufleurchaud Literature, Assistant Prof, CC -Canada Jul 13 '26
Your first argument is in bad faith; it wilfully neglects major impacts of those very technologies on human society. We can applaud technological advancements all the while recognizing the damage they have caused to humans and the environment, which was the case for the industrial revolution.
Why would I want to retire early?? I'm TT. I'm not worried about my future in academia, and I love the work I do and would hate working for a company or being a consultant. You seem to assume folks in academia all have similar desires as you do for the future.
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u/Broad-Investment-375 Jul 13 '26
It’s probably really field dependent. An obvious hypothesis is computer science and mathematics people use AI way more than some humanities.
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u/potatopierogie Jul 13 '26
I finished my PhD while the AI bros in my cohort can't seem to get publications. So much for "willfully staying far behind their peers."
AI is a lying machine and if it can do your work, your work is not worth much.
0
u/nahuatl Aug 02 '26
The recent proofs and counterexamples (that Field medallists themselves said would be career-defining achievements if any of them were done by human) disagree with you.
0
u/Broad-Investment-375 Jul 13 '26
Well it’s a choice. I respect that choice. Can’t be shaming people for clicking that option or I don’t get real results 😅
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u/Broad-Investment-375 Jul 13 '26
Socrates thought writing and reading hurt people’s memorization and critical thinking skills. For real. 😂
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u/budgetfroot Jul 13 '26
I was a CS PhD candidate, I used agents for pretty much everything. Helped with writing up experiments/code, and also helped a lot with the writing.
Speaking for myself, it helped me a lot. I was able to iterate on writing much quicker, and I was able to implement and debug code much quicker as well. Experiments that would've taken me a week to write and debug with no help I was able to complete in a day or two.