Can't LLMs be fed the entire corpus of literature to synthesise (if not "insight") useful intersections? Not to mention much better search than what was available when I was a lowly grad...
I use Gemini almost obsessively but I don't think feeding the entire corpus of a subject would work great.
The problem is so much of consensus is wrong and it is going to start by giving you the consensus answer on anything.
There are subjects I can get it to tell me the consensus answer then say "what about x" and it completely changes and contradicts the first answer because x contradicts the standard consensus orthodoxy.
To me it is not much different than going to the library to research something. The library is not useless because the books don't read themselves or because there are numerous books on a subject that contradict each other. Gaining insight from reading the book is my role.
I suspect much LLM criticism is from people who neither much use LLMs nor learn much of anything new anyway.
I never suggested I want an LLM to be the definitive answer to a question but I'm certain that there are a lot of low hanging fruit across disciplines where the limit is the awareness of people in one field of the work of another field, and the limiting factor was the friction in discovery - I can't see how a specialised research tool powered by LLMs and RAG wouldn't be a net gain for research if only to generate promising new leads.
Throwing compute to mine a search space seems like one of the less controversial ways to use technology...
