Attention is all you need to bankrupt a university

3 days ago

The 2017 paper 'Attention Is All You Need' introduced the transformer architecture, which is now foundational for large language models (LLMs).
American universities adopted a similar 'four-step operation' in social sciences, focusing on demographic categories and learned patterns.
Post-Cold War, federal funding shifted towards research with broader societal impacts, favoring scalable demographic frameworks.
Universities expanded programs in social sciences, leveraging scalable content to attract funding and students.
The replication crisis in social sciences highlighted issues with scalable research, yet the infrastructure persisted due to financial incentives.
Federal funding cuts in 2025 targeted research based on demographic categories, undermining universities' revenue streams.
AI, particularly LLMs, demonstrated the ability to replicate social science research, further threatening the need for human-generated analysis.
The university system's reliance on scalable, portable frameworks led to its own obsolescence as AI and funding cuts converged.

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