"manually dig through papers on Google Scholar for hours."
Is exactly how you gain expertise in a field and/or find those subtle gaps in knowledge that are the seeds of real breakthrough
Is exactly how you gain expertise in a field and/or find those subtle gaps in knowledge that are the seeds of real breakthrough
I think this is somewhat equivalent to how we used to have to learn 100 different integrals and derivatives in calculus. That's somewhat helpful. I learned to see patterns in math like that, the same way I learned a decent bit by browsing irrelevant abstracts and follow citation trails. But physically memorizing 100s of integrals is mostly a waste, and so are the irrelevant abstracts. You'll be much better at math (and hopefully science) if you can learn ~10 key integrals or read ~10 abstracts, and then spend the rest of your time understanding the high level patterns and implications by talking with an expert. Just like I can now ask GPT-4 to explain why some integral formula is true, which ones are related, and so on.
And that's the last point - these literature search tools aren't developing in isolation. We will get to have a local "expert" to discuss what we find with. That changes the cost-benefit analysis too.
The old dinosaurs on HN are snickering about the word "manual" here, having blown days pawing through the library stacks.
There is also the real fact that the greatest discoveries usually come from obscure corners and reading as much as you can is the only way to explore those corners. Otherwise, you're just refining what was done before you