GoKawiilI recently interviewed for a tenure-track position at a major research university that I will not name because I am still on the job market and cannot afford to burn bridges, although I will say it is located in Connecticut and rhymes with “Fail.” The interview was going well. I had prepared extensively. My research seminar was well-received. My one-on-one meetings were productive. And then came the chalk talk.
For those unfamiliar with the format, a chalk talk is a tradition in academic hiring in which candidates are asked to present their future research plans using only a chalkboard or whiteboard, without slides, to demonstrate their ability to think on their feet and explain complex ideas spontaneously. It is, in other words, a ritual designed in 1974 and never updated.
I walked into the room. I saw the whiteboard. I saw the markers. And then I placed my laptop on the table, opened a browser window to ChatGPT, and prepared to do what I do every single day in my actual scientific practice: type a prompt and receive a coherent, well-structured response that I would then lightly edit and present as my own thinking.
The room went silent.
“What are you doing?” asked the search committee chair.
“I’m preparing to answer your questions,” I said.
“With ChatGPT?”
“Yes,” I said. “How else would I do it?”
Apparently, “how else would I do it” is “from memory, using only my brain, like some kind of medieval peasant.” This was news to me.
Let me be clear about something: I am an excellent scientist. My publication record speaks for itself. I have first-author papers in high-impact journals. I have secured independent funding. I have mentored students. I have done all of the things that one is supposed to do to earn a tenure-track position. And I have done approximately 85% of them by typing prompts into a large language model and then moderately editing the output.
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