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How is Artificial Intelligence Changing Science?
Research in the Era of Learning Algorithms
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Andreas Sudmann / Anna Echterhölter / Markus Ramsauer / Fabian Retkowski / Jens Schröter / Alexander Waibel (eds.)
Beyond Quantity
Research with Subsymbolic AI
How do artificial neural networks and other forms of artificial intelligence interfere with methods and practices in the sciences? Which interdisciplinary epistemological challenges arise when we think about the use of AI beyond its dependency on big data? Not only the natural sciences, but also the social sciences and the humanities seem to be increasingly affected by current approaches of subsymbolic AI, which masters problems of quality (fuzziness, uncertainty) in a hitherto unknown way. But what are the conditions, implications, and effects of these (potential) epistemic transformations and how must research on AI be configured to address them adequately?
Project
How do artificial intelligence (AI) technologies affect research and science? By following this perspective, the project is less concerned with research on AI per se than with how different disciplines use AI as a tool. The central focus lies on how heterogeneous concepts and operations of the social sciences and humanities, on the one hand, and the natural and technical sciences, on the other, are integrated into applications of AI. Research on the latter will also explore the extent to which critical perspectives inform and accompany the use of AI. The project concentrates on artificial neural networks (ANN) because of their dominant status among current AI approaches. In order to extend the scope to an international level, it covers a variety of disciplines across Europe, including the natural sciences, social sciences, and the humanities. Hence, the project not only explores the similarities and differences among instances where AI is deployed in various fields, it also sheds light on the cultural and national specificities inherent to these processes.
Please find a German language version of the project description here.
We would like to thank the Volkswagen Foundation for funding this project.
More information on the funding program by the Volkswagen Foundation
