Paper Is Dead, Hardcore Research Must Rise
On Thursday, April 2, 2026, 19:30 - 21:00, I attended a talk by Professor Qiang Xu from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. The title was sharp: Paper Is Dead, Hardcore Research Must Rise: Self-cultivation For Researchers In The AI Era.
"Paper is dead" is of course a deliberately provocative phrase. But what it really pierces is not whether papers have value, but a deeper question: when AI is systematically rewriting the research workflow, what should researchers use to prove their value? And what should count as the real deliverable of future research?
After listening to the full talk, my strongest feeling was a question I kept turning over: has the AI era made research easier, or harder?