Short-term shortcut widen the knowledge gap. Long-term growth comes from doing the work.
Why Implement Papers Yourself?
Recently, a friend suggested: “Why don’t you use this new tool to implement research papers?”
That made me pause and think. Why do we even bother implementing papers ourselves?
The Purpose of Implementation
When I implement a paper, my goal is usually one of two things:
- To test an idea under different conditions
- To deeply understand what the main contribution really is
For both of these, relying on AI to do the heavy lifting doesn’t help much.
Discovery Through Process
Most of the time, we don’t know exactly what we want at the start — and that’s normal. By working through the process ourselves, we discover what actually matters.
If AI does all the work for us: - We risk building something irrelevant. - Each iteration makes the system more complex, but since we didn’t lay the foundation, we can’t really understand or improve it. - At some point, we get lost.
Knowledge Compounds
Knowledge compounds. The time you spend understanding an idea is never wasted — it accumulates and pays off later.
If you skip that learning, you’ll keep restarting from the same point, stuck in a loop. That may work for short-term business goals, but it isn’t good for your own growth.
Beyond Reproduction
Implementing papers isn’t just about reproducing results. It’s about reproducing understanding.
If we outsource that part, we’re not saving time. We’re skipping growth.