LLMs for science: Usage for code generation and data analysis

Abstract

Large language models (LLMs) have been touted to enable increased productivity in many areas of today's work life. Scientific research as an area of work is no exception: The potential of LLM-based tools to assist in the daily work of scientists has become a highly discussed topic across disciplines. However, we are only at the very onset of this subject of study. It is still unclear how the potential of LLMs will materialize in research practice. With this study, we give first empirical evidence on the use of LLMs in the research process. We have investigated a set of use cases for LLM-based tools in scientific research and conducted a first study to assess to which degree current tools are helpful. In this position paper, we report specifically on use cases related to software engineering, specifically, on generating application code and developing scripts for data analytics and visualization. While we studied seemingly simple use cases, results across tools differ significantly. Our results highlight the promise of LLM-based tools in general, yet we also observe various issues, particularly regarding the integrity of the output these tools provide.