This text discusses the impact of AI on academic research, specifically focusing on the role of business school professors and the transformation of their job responsibilities. It highlights the overlap between AI and business school professors’ tasks, emphasizing that this overlap leads to disruption and change rather than replacement. The text explores how AI is affecting the two major aspects of a professor’s job - educating and conducting academic research. It discusses the slowing pace of innovation in academia and suggests that AI may address this issue. The text also delves into the four potential narrow singularities that AI is bringing to academic research, including changes in writing and publishing, research methods, the significance of research, and what topics are being researched. Lastly, it emphasizes the need to reconsider scientific publishing, address the role of AI in research, bridge the gap between academia and the public, and understand the implications and capabilities of AI.
| Signal | Change | 10y horizon | Driving force |
|---|---|---|---|
| Academic research pace slowing down | Change in pace of innovation | Increased use of AI to accelerate research process; potential for AI-written papers and AI peer reviews | Desire for faster innovation |
| AI-generated writing and publishing | Change in research process | Increased use of AI in writing and publishing academic articles; rethinking scientific publishing and peer review; potential for automated bad research | Efficiency in research process |
| AI’s impact on how research is done | Change in research techniques | AI-assisted research; text analysis; simulation of human behavior; autonomous discovery of new knowledge; potential biases and errors; need for monitoring | Access to new research techniques |
| AI bridging the gap between research and the public | Change in communication and collaboration | AI’s role in explaining academic research to the public; facilitating interdisciplinary cooperation; assisting with literature reviews | Enhancing communication and collaboration |
| The need to understand AI implications and capabilities in research | Change in research focus and interdisciplinary collaboration | Crashing effort to understand AI’s impact across various fields; shaping development, mitigating risks, and gaining benefits; interdisciplinary collaboration | Recognizing AI as a General Purpose Technology |