The Waymo effect: how AI is quietly making research less collaborative

Using an always-available chatbot for research may reduce occasions to think with another person. That is the concern Daniel Hook raises in an essay: a human collaborator brings competing priorities and unexpected objections, while an assistant is available on demand and mostly challenges what it is asked to challenge.

The essay argues that incentives to publish quickly can reinforce this substitution, especially when funding pressure falls first on unmeasured activities such as travel and workshops. The proposed response is to protect time and funding for people to work together. This is an argument about a possible loss of intellectual exchange, rather than a measurement showing that AI has already reduced research collaboration.