AI-Native PhD Students. If you’re a student and just want the… | by Eytan Adar | Aug, 2026 | Medium
My colleagues and I are fascinated by a new type of PhD student. These students are starting the program and essentially executing a research paper, end-to-end, in a few weeks. In the past, this would be impressive even for senior PhD students. The explanation, for the most part, is that “AI-native” students can now perform research through generative (GenAI) tools. GenAI — LLMs and their various siblings and children — can speed up any part of the process: ideation, data collection, analysis, coding, literature reviews, writing, etc. When I talk about AI-natives, I don’t mean students who always have Grammarly turned on or who can write a quick prompt to fix a ton of BibTeX entries. I also don’t mean those students whose research is GenAI+discipline — those who are adapting or applying the models in new ways. Rather, the AI-natives I have in mind are those who have learned how to replace significant parts of the research process with AI. They have a sense of the steps that go into res