A few days ago, I attended a conference where the topic shifted to how AI is changing scientific research. It was supposed to be a closing session, but the conversation wouldn't stop. Several interesting points didn't get fully explored, so I've been thinking them over for the past two days and decided to jot them down. 1. AI Writing Papers Is Already the Norm; the Real Question Is the Paper Itself The fact that AI writes papers has become so commonplace it barely needs discussion. In a 2025 Nature survey of 5,000 researchers, 57% admitted to using AI to help write over the past two years, and 72% plan to use it in the next two. These are just the numbers researchers were willing to admit. Someone at the conference argued this isn't actually good for early-career researchers. Writing papers used to be a form of mental training; with models doing the writing, that step gets skipped. I didn't immediately react when I heard this. It took some thinking to see clearly.…