As a mere software engineer, I found that many human written papers in my field (DSP, ML) aren’t exactly well-written, easily understandable or pleasant to read either, and it’s been the case for at least 15 years. In the past, I would frequently spend an hour or two trying to read a SOTA paper full of convoluted prose and dense pages of equations, only to realise that the algorithm is incredibly simple if visualised properly or even just written down as pseudocode.
Now with LLMs the process is much shorter. They can walk me through the algorithm step by step, translate it to pseudocode, explain equations, and most importantly, I can ask them questions and get clarifications, without worrying about seeming ignorant or exhausting their patience. With a paper, you’re stuck with whatever was written (and often, researchers aren’t good teachers, or intentionally over complicate simple concepts).
Now with LLMs the process is much shorter. They can walk me through the algorithm step by step, translate it to pseudocode, explain equations, and most importantly, I can ask them questions and get clarifications, without worrying about seeming ignorant or exhausting their patience. With a paper, you’re stuck with whatever was written (and often, researchers aren’t good teachers, or intentionally over complicate simple concepts).