An economics-focused essay argues that AI-assisted research is making the traditional academic paper less central, pushing toward what the author calls the “living manuscript”—a continuously updated document powered by AI agents as new data and methods emerge. The piece frames the change around field-specific shifts toward causal and experimental research, which modern AI systems can execute efficiently for data cleaning, specification building, robustness checks, and production of publication tables. While the author positions the development as exciting for applied researchers, the article emphasizes that scholars have not fully absorbed the implications for incentives, publication norms, and how academic work will be evaluated. In higher education terms, the story signals an emerging teaching and assessment problem: faculty and universities are likely to face pressure to revise research-assignment policies and to formalize what constitutes academic contribution when analyses can be repeatedly regenerated. For students and graduate programs, the immediate implication is curricular: AI literacy may need to extend beyond tool use toward documentation, provenance, and how to critique and verify continuously updated research artifacts.