‘Stop calling it slop’: University of Nottingham professor defends use of AI in academia

As AI becomes a prominent topic of discussion in the academic world, scholars have been forced to respond. Five academics, including a University of Nottingham professor, have shared their thoughts on the role of AI in research.

Phillip Moriarty is a professor of physics at UoN, and is one of five scholars who contributed to a series of articles discussing the impact of AI in the lives of academics.

His article, titled “Stop calling it slop,” addresses misconceptions around AI. In fact, he confesses early on he has used Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 4.6 to write part of the article to assess whether readers can notice. His only hint is not to count the renowned em dashes.

University of Nottingham, via Unsplash

Although he acknowledges its environmental impact and risk to students’ critical abilities, Moriarty argues the criticisms other academics make about AI are not always accurate.

One common misconception the professor points out is that AI operates like a search engine. He argues instead it operates more like a human researcher.

When he gave “Claude” an equation to translate into working code, it did so easily, and produced a code which does not exist anywhere online.

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However, Moriarty points out that such a task would usually be given to a PhD researcher or advanced undergraduate student. In light of this, he considers the loss of the learning process when using AI.

“My mantra as a physics undergraduate was simple: ‘If I can’t code it, I don’t understand it.’ That principle is not merely under pressure. It is dead in the water. The necessary pain of the learning process—and, crucially, its reward—has been short-circuited. And the reasoning capabilities that make this possible extend well beyond code generation.”

When he gave ChatGPT an undergraduate physics paper, it scored 95 per cent and, at times, reached an answer better than those in some textbooks.

The university professor concludes that AI is not “slop.” Instead, it is an interesting, and often unsettling, new technology.

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Featured image via Unsplash