# Large Language Models to the Rescue: Reducing the Complexity in Scientific Workflow Development Using ChatGPT

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.01825 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.01825/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 40 of its 113 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 Nov 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 40)

- [BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1810.04805/) (2018)
- [Language Models are Few-Shot Learners](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2005.14165/) (2020)
- [Training language models to follow instructions with human feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.02155/) (2022)
- [LLaMA: Open and Efficient Foundation Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.13971/) (2023)
- [Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.11903/) (2022)
- [Evaluating Large Language Models Trained on Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.03374/) (2021)
- [Code Llama: Open Foundation Models for Code](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.12950/) (2023)
- [BLOOM: A 176B-Parameter Open-Access Multilingual Language Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.05100/) (2022)
- [Competition-Level Code Generation with AlphaCode](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.07814/) (2022)
- [LaMDA: Language Models for Dialog Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.08239/) (2022)
- [PaLM 2 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.10403/) (2023)
- [Teaching Large Language Models to Self-Debug](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.05128/) (2023)
- [Graph of Thoughts: Solving Elaborate Problems with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.09687/) (2023)
- [SelfCheckGPT: Zero-Resource Black-Box Hallucination Detection for Generative Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08896/) (2023)
- [A Prompt Pattern Catalog to Enhance Prompt Engineering with ChatGPT](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.11382/) (2023)
- [Promptbreeder: Self-Referential Self-Improvement Via Prompt Evolution](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.16797/) (2023)
- [CodeRL: Mastering Code Generation through Pretrained Models and Deep Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.01780/) (2022)
- [Check Your Facts and Try Again: Improving Large Language Models with External Knowledge and Automated Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.12813/) (2023)
- [GitHub Copilot AI pair programmer: Asset or Liability?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2206.15331/) (2022)
- [An Analysis of the Automatic Bug Fixing Performance of ChatGPT](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.08653/) (2023)
- [Jigsaw: Large Language Models meet Program Synthesis](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.02969/) (2021)
- [Language Models are Open Knowledge Graphs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.11967/) (2020)
- [Studying the effect of AI Code Generators on Supporting Novice Learners in Introductory Programming](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.07427/) (2023)
- [PyMT5: multi-mode translation of natural language and Python code with transformers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.03150/) (2020)
- [Enabling Conversational Interaction with Mobile UI using Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.08655/) (2022)
- [ChatGPT Prompt Patterns for Improving Code Quality, Refactoring, Requirements Elicitation, and Software Design](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.07839/) (2023)
- [Chat2VIS: Generating Data Visualisations via Natural Language using ChatGPT, Codex and GPT-3 Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.02094/) (2023)
- ["What It Wants Me To Say": Bridging the Abstraction Gap Between End-User Programmers and Code-Generating Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.06597/) (2023)
- [PopBlends: Strategies for Conceptual Blending with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.04920/) (2021)
- [ChatGPT as your Personal Data Scientist](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.13657/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [ScienceBoard: Evaluating Multimodal Autonomous Agents in Realistic Scientific Workflows](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.19897/) (2025)
- [Generative AI Uses and Risks for Knowledge Workers in a Science Organization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.16577/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Scientific workflow systems are increasingly popular for expressing and executing complex data analysis pipelines over large datasets, as they offer reproducibility, dependability, and scalability of analyses by automatic parallelization on large compute clusters. However, implementing workflows is difficult due to the involvement of many black-box tools and the deep infrastructure stack necessary for their execution. Simultaneously, user-supporting tools are rare, and the number of available examples is much lower than in classical programming languages. To address these challenges, we investigate the efficiency of Large Language Models (LLMs), specifically ChatGPT, to support users when dealing with scientific workflows. We performed three user studies in two scientific domains to evaluate ChatGPT for comprehending, adapting, and extending workflows. Our results indicate that LLMs efficiently interpret workflows but achieve lower performance for exchanging components or purposeful workflow extensions. We characterize their limitations in these challenging scenarios and suggest future research directions.