The Inversion: What Remains of Research When the Machine Can Ideate? (opens in new tab)

A few months ago, I asked an AI to sketch a distributed consensus protocol for a problem I’d been puzzling over. In 12 seconds, it produced something structurally similar to what a capable Ph.D. student might develop over several weeks—not identical to what I had in mind, but plausible, and in some ways more elegant. I sat with that for a while. Not because the output was perfect (it wasn’t), but because of what it implied about the nature of the work I thought I was doing. Over the winter br...