> “It’s not about the architecture per se,” Evans says. “It’s about the incentives.”

It would have been useful to check whether less original work was already getting more citations before AI adoption. That could reflect broader trends and network effects: heavily cited research areas attract more authors optimizing for citations, so high-productivity researchers end up clustering on the same topics.

The actual paper is linked there if you are curious.

But also just thinking about your point for one second: in your mind, how else would they argue for the conclusion if not by checking the trend over time? Like what is the precise implication here?

They did. The article explains tbat this is a trend which has been getting worse for years, specifically pointing to search engines as a major turning point. Your comment is completely off the mark.