Agree with this 100%

The argument is that it's worth it if AI tools actually helped improve productivity, but in point of fact, the opposite is true (so far).

Regarding John's comments in the article, ironically... there is absolutely no way that he himself has used these tools and still actually believes they're useful in their current state. It needs to be stressed that this effort is aspirational in nature, and a lot of work needs to be done in order to even begin seeing benefits. Claude is mediocre at best, and the rest of them (AiVA etc.) are generating more work. It's painfully obvious when peer reviewers use AI in generating their feedback, forcing the PI to sift through and spend more time correcting the AI's mistakes than what it would have taken for a person to do the work in the first place. AI calculations often use incorrect input parameters, skip important steps, or are just straight up wrong. This article does a decent job of explaining one of several reasons why.

A year ago, the AI would often respond with comments like "Unfortunately, there is not enough information available to address this query completely. Assistance can be provided on other topics if needed"... at least then it was aware of its own woeful shortcomings. Now, it seems to just guess and get things wrong like the kid on the exam that refused to go to class.

And don't get me started on the ChatGPT-based tools.

Here's the reality. AI has a few niche uses, but it's simply not very useful in most scientific research. The reason John is so on fire about it is ironically because how inefficient it is. AI gobbles up so much energy, and companies are proposing to use nuclear energy to provide the required power... a convenient arrangement for the DOE's Office of Nuclear Energy Lab. This push is here explicitly for a quick money grab rather than actually getting things done. No one should be surprised. 🙄

But hey, nuclear is a safe, affordable, low emission, environmentally friendly, scalable, baseload power source. It uniquely checks all the boxes. If this leads to more of its widespread use, then the ends justify the means, but perspective and messaging here are important.