Are We Just Applying LLMs? What SE Research Studies, Underexplores, and Could Do Next in the LLM Era

Zeinadsadat Saghi, Sadra Sabouri, Souti Chattopadhyay

Is AI taking over software engineering research? By 2025, AI appeared in more than half of the research-track papers at ICSE, FSE, and ASE. Yet ubiquity alone cannot show whether AI expanded the publication portfolio, displaced other work, or redirected the intellectual agenda. We investigate this shift through a census of 4,790 research papers (three SE conferences; 2018--2026) and free-form responses from 244 SE researchers discussing the future of the SE research community (ICSE 2026 FoSE survey). We found that while AI is taking over, it is not simply replacing non-AI research; it is unevenly reorganizing SE research around its capabilities. AI accounted for 93.1% of publication growth, but expansion in some venues and problem areas concealed contraction in others. The LLM wave also changed the field's tools more than its problem boundaries: 92.6% of LLM-wave AI papers revisit established SE problems, while most new problems arise from the introduction of LLMs in the SE process themselves. Engagement with AI remains predominantly downstream: 95.7% of AI papers apply AI or evaluate and support its use, while only 4.3% interrogate the paradigm or develop alternatives. The FoSE…