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Most colleges, even before LLMs, were already a waste of time for most students. I mean they were somewhat effective for networking and economic signaling to employers but they had already lost the plot in terms of real value to society. And now with LLMs the entire education system will need to be rebuilt. Let's get to work.

Because learning is fun, useful and addictive all on its own?

This was already why people went to grad school. I think people weigh a complex bag of known and perceived motivations and risks. One of the risks is that your project gets "scooped." There were some weak ethical and practical safeguards around that. But completely rearranging the risk equation will change peoples minds about whether graduate study is worth it.

Disclosure: PhD, early 1990s. In my case, replicating my project would have required a sizable investment in equipment, much of it was purpose-built, among other things.

Interestingly we're a few months away from a data point on what happens to grad school applications.

yeah, let's all be stupid together