[kingkongjaffa]

If you have mapped the research space and understand it very well then what does it matter how you got there?

For example when I was doing my master's degree in the UK, I realised my research topic had about 10 people around the world working on similar problems and I had read all of their papers.

I could trace the early research and seminal works in the field from the 1960s until now and knew by name (and often email correspondence) the 10 or so researchers working in the hyper-niche space.

If you can get to some kind of intimate understanding about your body of research the method is not really relevant. But take the LLM away can you still hold a conversation with an expert? LLM cannot read the papers for you.