AI and the PhD student: friend or foe?

"I would say AI is a blessing for researchers today. But she worries about the next generation of researchers. When she was an undergraduate, there was no AI like this. We sat for hours and read, practised, tried and retried until we got it. Now people want AI to write everything. AI is a blessing, but it has made students lazy."

"When Nature surveyed almost 3,800 PhD students last year, three-quarters thought AI tools could help students to work more efficiently, and 71% felt it was acceptable to use them to support their studies - yet the majority also voiced strong concerns. Some 81% said they don't fully trust AI tools and 65% worried that AI weakens thinking, research and writing skills."

"In a survey of 1,041 UK undergraduates published in February 2025, 88% admitted to using AI for assessments, up from 53% the year before. The proportion of respondents who had used any AI tool also jumped, from 66% in 2024 to 92% in 2025. Such a rapid change in behaviour is almost unheard of."

PhD students exhibit mixed attitudes toward artificial intelligence tools in academic work. While most acknowledge AI's efficiency benefits for literature searches, code generation, and paper summarization, significant concerns persist about skill degradation. A Nature survey of 3,800 PhD students found 75% believed AI could improve efficiency, yet 81% distrusted the tools and 65% worried AI weakens thinking and writing abilities. UK undergraduate AI adoption surged dramatically from 53% in 2024 to 88% in 2025, representing unprecedented behavioral change. Researchers like Leona Diala actively verify AI outputs and rewrite content in their own words, but express concern that younger researchers may become overly dependent on automation, potentially sacrificing the foundational skills developed through traditional academic struggle.

Read at Nature