Despite the prospect and existence of AI generated texts having been around for some time, the launch of ChatGPT has galvanized a debate around how it could or should be used in research and teaching. Putting aside the ethical issues of using AI in aca…
Category: AI Data and Society
We’re more and more aware of digital harms, but what is the digital good?
Research and media stories often highlight how digital technologies have had a negative impact on our lives. But what might it mean to set out a vision of the ‘digital good’? Director of a new ESRC-funded network focused on the digital good, Helen Kenn…
Moving slowly and fixing things – We should not rush headlong into using generative AI in classrooms
Reflecting on a recent interview with Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, Mohammad Hosseini, Lex Bouter and Kristi Holmes, argue against a rapid and optimistic embrace of new technology in favour of a measured and evidence-based …
Seeing families as data will change the state’s relationship to society
Rosalind Edwards and Pamela Ugwudike discuss how the increased use of linked social data and predictive machine learning is changing the state’s relationship to families, from the here and now to an anticipated future and from one grounded in a sociolo…
ChatGPT will not replace Google Search
As speculation mounts that ChatGPT might replace Google Search, Tristan Greene cuts through the hype, arguing ChatGPT at present cannot replicate Google’s search function – “Saying ChatGPT will replace search is like saying podcasts w…
Can artificial intelligence assess the quality of academic journal articles in the next REF?
In this blog post Mike Thelwall, Kayvan Kousha, Paul Wilson, Mahshid Abdoli, Meiko Makita, Emma Stuart and Jonathan Levitt discuss the results of a recent project for UKRI that made recommendations about whether artificial intelligence (AI) could be us…
Hype, or the future of teaching and learning? 3 Limits to AI’s ability to write student essays
The growth of original, AI-generated content demands that we reconsider methods of student assessment. Clare Williams explores the impact of ChatGPT on pedagogy, identifying three current weaknesses that instructors might bear in mind when setting stud…
AI paper mills and image generation require a co-ordinated response from academic publishers
The role of AI in the production of research papers is rapidly moving from being a futuristic vision, towards an everyday reality; a situation with significant consequences for research integrity and the detection of fraudulent research. Rebecca Lawren…
Book Review: Paradoxes of Digital Disengagement: In Search of the Opt-Out Button by Adi Kuntsman and Esperanza Miyake
In Paradoxes of Digital Disengagement: In Search of the Opt-Out Button – available open access from University of Westminster Press – Adi Kuntsman and Esperanza Miyake explore digital disconnection across fields including health, the welfare system, ci…
The Lovelace Effect – AI generated texts should lead us to re-value creativity in academic writing
The continuing development of AI generated writing has led to a debate around its use in higher education. In this post, Simone Natale and Leah Henrickson, draw on their research into computational creativity and introduce the concept of the ‘Lovelace …