4 Ways to Use AI on a PhD Thesis

AI tools can be effectively used to assist in the complex process of writing a PhD thesis. The author details using a large language model like Claude as a research assistant to find citations within a curated set of papers, functioning like a RAG system. Another key application involves using coding agents to consolidate code from numerous experiments into a single, reproducible repository for a project on deep learning for coastal erosion. The process also includes fact-checking against cited papers and generating potential defense questions. Throughout these examples, the emphasis is on using AI to augment human effort and produce higher-quality work, rather than offloading the core intellectual tasks.