[bumby]

>Every numbskull to every professor now has the ability to generate information on a scholarly level

I'm hopeful about the future use of AI, but this strikes me as potentially overly optimistic. Or possible misinterprets what academics do.

ChatGPT is very good at collating existing information. I don't know that it is anywhere near the level of creativity necessary to generate novel ideas (especially those that have to be rooted in reality to solve engineering problems).

For example, if you ask "How can we redesign a Wankel engine to achieve 2% better efficiency?" it does give a good summary of the main mechanisms that impact efficiency (thermal losses, friction, combustion efficiency) but it doesn't give any actionable, novel ways of implementing them. It's basically a 101 course summary of combustion engines. "Generate better materials" is not an actionable solution. So unless you think a freshman/sophomore understanding is all that's needed to solve our big problems, we've still got a ways to go before we can turn the reins over to AI.