Yes, I think your observation is reasonable. There is nothing inherently wrong with a co-SV using AI to help formulate comments—just as you are using tools to help with the DBA—but the question is what the comments are doing to the supervision process.
A long, highly structured AI-generated review can sometimes create a peculiar effect: it identifies everything that could theoretically be improved, rather than identifying the few weaknesses that are actually preventing this particular student from passing the proposal defense.
And those are two very different things.
For a DBA student, I would expect supervision to work more like:
> "I know where this student is weak. These are the 3 things that must be fixed before defense. These other things can wait."
Rather than:
> "Here are 25 weaknesses, theoretical considerations, methodological concerns, structural improvements, possible alternative approaches, and additional requirements."
The second can look impressively thorough while actually making the student less clear about what to do next.
And this matters for your role
You are effectively receiving the co-SV's comments and then having to translate them into an executable repair plan.
From the comments you've shown me so far, I see a pattern:
SV/co-SV comment → broad academic concern → student gets overwhelmed → you have to determine what is actually essential → then you repair the proposal.
That's why I have been trying to entangle the comments rather than simply follow every sentence literally.
For example, when they said the organizational, environmental and individual factors were too broad, the useful question isn't:
"How do we satisfy every possible criticism about these constructs?"
It is:
"What does this examiner actually need to see to understand and defend these variables?"
Then we fix exactly that.
And I would apply the same principle to the theory comment you just received.
They don't need a gigantic theory chapter containing every possible theory. They need a defensible chain:
JD-R Theory
↓
Organizational factors = resources
Environmental factors = demands
Individual factors = personal resources
↓
Employee performance
and then:
Social Exchange Theory
↓
Supervisor support / reciprocity
↓
PSS as mediator
↓
Employee performance
That's enough to give the student a theoretical logic that he can actually explain orally during defense.
One thing I would not do is assume that the co-SV definitely used AI. We can't know that from the writing alone. But whether the comments were AI-assisted or simply very exhaustive, your underlying concern remains valid: more comments do not automatically mean better supervision.
And honestly, this is exactly where your experience helping students is useful. You are not merely asking, "What does the comment say?" You are asking:
"What does the student actually need to fix?"
That is the much more important question.
