Academic Proof-of-Work in the Age of LLMs

Written quickly as part of the Inkhaven Residency. Related: Bureaucracy as active ingredient, pain as active ingredient A widely known secret in academia is that many of the formalities serve in large part proof of work. That is, the reason expensive procedures exist is that some way of filtering must exist, and the amount of effort invested can often be a good proxy for the quality of the work. Specifically, the pool of research is vast, and good research can often be hard to identify. Even engaging in research enough to understand its quality can be expensive.