Association of Research Libraries and Coalition for Networked Information Publish AI-Influenced Scenarios for Research Environment

Association of Research Libraries and Coalition for Networked Information Publish AI-Influenced Scenarios for Research Environment

“Key highlights from the publication include:

• Scenario 1—Democratizing AI is a world in which AI technologies create an unprecedented integration of human and computational capabilities that flourish with increasingly open knowledge access. In this scenario, AI integrates with humans seamlessly, responsibly, and safely.
• Scenario 2—Technocratic AI is a world in which AI’s impact on the research and knowledge ecosystem is relatively low, with the primary AI advances and impact being seen in consumer applications that are readily profitable, relatively uncontroversial, and lower-barrier applications.
• Scenario 3—Divisive AI is a world of missed opportunities, bad decisions, and fecklessness. AI applications incorporating egregious bias or dysfunction were deployed, leading to misinformation validating and strengthening flawed systems that exclude many and strengthen and enrich a few.
• Scenario 4—Autonomous AI is a world in which AI is becoming an increasingly independent partner and collaborator in research and learning. Knowledge advances rapidly well beyond the research advances possible by humans. Society has knowingly and unknowingly given up increasing agency to AI.”