[dataflow]

>> Makes me wonder what the value of a PhD is.

> I would say to push frontier of human knowledge forwards.

Not sure if this is what you meant, but to be clear: pushing human knowledge forward is a practical prerequisite of a PhD (given it's pretty hard to convince people you're adequately trained to do such a thing without actually demonstrating it), but it's not the value of the PhD itself. The value is producing a researcher -- that is, someone who has the skills to continue accomplishing this in the future.

The difference is that if you happen to expand human knowledge by a stroke of dumb luck (or smart AI...) without actually having acquired skills to continue doing so in the future, then you're not really earning a PhD.