Written by Trang Nguyen / Photo by @hendrikmorkel on Unsplash
July 2026, round 32 of the World Cup. When the little-known Lopes Cabral of Cabo Verdes paused for a split second and took a decisive shot at the top left corner of the Argentinian goal post, I felt it. Everybody who was watching the game felt it. The people in the room, the people in the stadium, the people on the pitch. Onscreen or offscreen, from the greenest mountains of Asia to the bluest coastlines of Africa, we all felt the exact same thing: disbelief. “It’s incredible, it’s remarkable, it’s almost unbelievable!” – one commentator yelled at the top of his lungs as a knee-jerk reaction to history in the making. Seconds later, I sensed my chest rising, my nose sniffling, and my eyes tearing up. Only one word could capture all of my emotions: awe. It was the perfect concoction of talent, of grit, of courage, of hopes and dreams, and of aerodynamics.
By this time, I had been going through half of the year with a heavy heart. I was still doing good work and making steady progress, but the floods of AI were drowning me. The breaking news, the constant noise and the unprecedented pressure to accelerate pulled me into the deep and I fought with all my might to keep my head above water. For the first time, I really thought: “Maybe this is not for me. Maybe I’m not cut out for science.” I believed that AI was going to make research easier and better. In a narrow sense, it actually did. But it didn’t feel quite right. I had changed my minds countless times about whether to keep using AI, how to use it, and what to use it on. Just when I thought I had cracked the code, the code cracked me. It was an endless rollercoaster with a clusterfuck of loops and harnesses and agents and “You are absolutely right. I’m sorry I misunderstood”.
Something fundamental was missing. I couldn’t figure out what it was until I saw that ball drop right into the net after barely dodging the bars. Close enough to make me hold my breath yet far enough to take my breath away. Research was never easy, doubt was inevitable, but I started this career because I was once in awe of science. The harmony of the double helix, the hilarious accounts of sexual selection, the incredibly inefficient but effective quirks of evolution (in giraffes, the recurrent laryngeal nerve that connects the brain and the larynx is around 5 meters long although these two organs are only less than 15 centimeters apart!). The tunnel vision of prompting and producing had made me lose sight of the awe that once inspired me to become a scientist.
Correctly diagnosing the deficit, however, is far from finding the right treatment for it. Awe and Inspiration (my first “AI” model) are funny things – they don’t just come to us on command like a golden retriever. They’re more like cats – spontaneous, temperamental, and merciless. They can be the most wonderful and unexpected companions on a difficult journey, but they can also hang us out to dry when we need them the most. For weeks after that World Cup game, I searched and searched and searched. Every day, I would read some scientific articles or blogs, or talk to colleagues about random topics, or go on long walks to refresh my mind. But that state of awe was never replicated. I could not engineer my way out of the slumber of ennui and into the trance of zest.
However, throughout this process, something else happened. My curiosity was activated. My attention diversified. My range of motion and emotion expanded. My train of thought was no longer limited to the terminals on the screen. Did I stop using AI? No. It just ceased to be the all-consuming force that drove my daily research activities. It was fine to have half-baked slides on short notice of a presentation. It was fine (and in many cases, more appropriate) to use the boring linear regression and t-tests and not some crazy 5D chess moves that coding agents suggested. It was fine to say “I don’t know” instead of frantically and discreetly asking ChatGPT (come to think of it, ChatGPT is the exact opposite of high school sex – everybody is doing it while pretending otherwise!). While hunting for Awe and Inspiration, I accidentally caught their much more magnetic isotope, the second “AI” model: Action and Insight.
I always think of research as a marathon. Awe is what catches our attention, which then leads to the Inspiration to start the marathon, but it’s the Action of consistently putting one foot in front of the other that carries us all the way to the finish line, and although the body is completely exhausted, the mind gets rewarded with lots of Insight during and after the race. And once again, we are awestruck by our own resilience baked into each double helix. These two “AI” models work together, sequentially and in parallel, to keep us going.
In hindsight, I don’t think what I experienced earlier this year was AI-specific. The heavy dullness, the desire to perfect every little thing and the feeling of running everywhere while arriving at nowhere can happen to anyone at any stage of a research project or career. I cannot advise you what to do if and when you are going through such a phase, I can only share a quote that I repeat to myself every day. The Roman emperor and Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius once wrote: “The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” So take a deep breath, a sip of water and a taste of honey, and keep putting one foot in front of the other. And one day, you will look back and realize how incredible, remarkable and almost unbelievable it all was.
Do you recognize yourself in this article? The PhD advisors are here for you. Get in touch with us for a consultation (phdadvisor@amsterdamumc.nl).