Chelsea McCracken
Researcher
Ithaka S+R
While the impact of generative artificial intelligence (AI) on universities’ teaching and learning missions has been a major topic of conversation and controversy since the release of ChatGPT, the effects of the new technology on the research mission of these institutions have attracted less attention. In this session, we will share findings from three Ithaka S+R projects—including from an international survey of biomedical researchers—that assess the risks and opportunities generative AI presents to the research enterprise. Our findings indicate that researchers are open to using generative AI for research and are experimenting with ways to do so. Yet very few have turned the experimentations into active use. Adoption is limited by serious concerns about the accuracy of generative AI’s outputs and uncertainty about how to use generative AI productively. Absent continued improvement in the quality of generative AI outputs and the emergence of compelling best practices and models for using generative AI to make researchers more productive, adoption may plateau, at least in the short term. We’ll conclude our presentation by sharing insights into what those best practices and models could be, and how vendors, universities, publishers, and funders can support them.
https://sr.ithaka.org/blog/biomedical-research-and-generative-ai/