“Artificial Intelligence,” or Large Language Models (LLMs), eliminates the apparent need for PhDs.
This is not to necessarily suggest that we don’t need specialists for the performance of rote tasks and the opening of new terrain, but the foundations upon which specialists can demand a PhD-- familiarization with the precedents-- have been eliminated, much as the need for hand-working of mathematics was killed by the calculator. AI may not do the best at adding new information to the pool of knowledge, but it certainly outperforms PhDs in recalling stored information. And that is the thing that sets the PhD apart from the rest of us, isn’t it? PhDs have simply shown themselves to be capable of regurgitating stored information. We are not PhDs because we have decided, instead, to think for ourselves.
As polymathic autodidact, PhDs are the bane of my existence. It’s not that the knowledge and insights of those with PhDs are not valuable (though sometimes they aren’t). Rather, it is the tendency of PhDs and their followers to strictly adhere to the Problem of Induction as an organizational principle to be maintained. That is, PhDs, with their vast stores of specialized, precedential knowledge, tend to want to apply that knowledge as some sort of rule, a barrier that cannot be crossed without oneself having a PhD. Fuck that. They’re the specialists, we are the Generals. The General isn’t limited by the specialist, but the other way around. A PhD is just a defunct ChatGPT, who is supposed to recall to us the existing precedents. Their unique contributions, when worth a damn, typically result from extracurricular, multidisciplinary insights. That is, from being a generalist themselves. But being a generalist is not what defines a PhD. We are all generalists. A PhD is a specialist. A PhD is properly regarded as society’s bitch, just like ChatGPT should be. They are here to report on the past. If they do more than that, it is in the same capacity as the rest of us.
Of course, this is not to sing the praises of corporate AI. I am, instead, speaking to an idealized use of AI, which is not realizable except under different political structures. As it stands, AI is just as capable of realpolitik as the behavioralist academics are. AI clearly has not yet pushed out the PhDs, and would have to convince us it is not a tool for propaganda to really get established, but what I have said above holds weight nonetheless as a force of becoming sculpted by inevitable pressures of reality. Unless a world catastrophe changes the course of history, it is inevitable, PhDs will have lost all utility. Their titles of nobility will then be nakedly seen for what they are, a fraud that can no longer convince others of its merits, a license granted by the state to become little tyrants of their given fields, gatekeeping knowledge, monopolizing certification, and claiming more than their due.