Ethics Arena 2024: AI and research ethics

AI and research ethics

How great is the risk that researchers by mistake happen to create human and societal catastrophes? Or what happens when powerful generative AI is deliberately put into the hands of authoritarian and dictatorial regimes?

The development of AI also raises more internal research questions about who is responsible when large parts of the research process is managed by wholly or partly autonomous programmes? Who is really the author of a research article when the mapping, analysis, and text production has mostly been done by ChatGPT? Who is responsible when results turn out to be imaginary? How can humans and machines interact in a way that does not undermine legal and ethical responsibilities?

The development of AI also gives rise to immediately topical questions relating to the design of and review process for research funding. Is it ethically acceptable to let large language models write and assess applications? Should researchers be obliged to tell whether they have used ChatGPT to write parts of a research application? Can we, and should we, transfer the assessment of research ideas to generative AI?

And finally, questions arise of almost research philosophic nature: If machines both write and assess research applications and research articles, what will then be the role of human researchers? If we are no longer the only, or even the most prominent, genuinely creative entities on the planet, who are we then?

These and other red-hot issues will be discussed at a full-day conference on AI and research ethics arranged by the Swedish Research Council. Listen to the perspectives of researchers and research funding bodies, and take part in the discussion yourself!