Post #2483176

2026-05-12 05:34 UTC

I am trying my best not to be too pessimistic about the state of academia, but then there are mornings like today when I see that the Deutscher Hochschulverband [the German association of university professors] is offering a further training course entitled &quot;Der Weg zum Forschungsantrag mit Multi-Agenten: Forschung mit KI neu denken&quot; [Roadmap to a multi-agent research proposal: Rethinking research with AI]. This four-hour practical workshop demonstrates how to make use of multiple &quot;AI agents&quot; to review the literature, develop research questions and hypotheses, and write grant proposals. At a mere 250 € for members, the course is (of course) already sold out: https://www.dhvseminare.de/forschungsantrag_mit_multi-agenten_online-workshop. If, two years ago, someone had told me that it would be academics themselves that would make universities redundant, I wouldn&#39;t have believed them. Now I&#39;m not so sure... #academia #Hochschule #university

Replies (3)

@ElenLeFoll@fediscience.org 2026-05-12 05:40

So Mastodon bubble, what do we do? Carry on as if everything was fine? Call this out? (if so, how?)... I am honestly at a loss...

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@tomkalei@machteburch.social 2026-05-12 06:03

@ElenLeFoll@fediscience.org Ok, so these „AI drafted“ proposals are surely going to be very innovative and not incremental at all 🙄, but that aside: the whole concept of being taught how to use AI makes no sense to me. If you want to use AI you can just use it. If you don’t know how to use it, you can ask the AI. What people would need to learn is how powerful computers and source code are. In German we call it Digitalisierung and we suck at it.

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@vicgrinberg@mastodon.social 2026-05-12 08:20

@ElenLeFoll@fediscience.org wobei der deutsche Hochschulverband, wenn mich meine Erinnerung nicht trügt, ein konservativer Haufen ist, der auch in der Vergangenheit durch eher fragwürdiges Verhalten aufgefallen ist. Da waren weder meine Mentor*innen noch ich in meiner deutschen Zeit dabei, mit Absicht...

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