<scp>AI</scp> And the Editors' Ghost: Who Is the Writer Now?

Abstract

ABSTRACT This an exploration of the use of AI in research and writing. It builds upon the ‘Harbingers’ project, an international and longitudinal study of early career researchers (ECRs) and scholarly communication. In the fourth phase of the project, we returned to the theme of AI, in particular AI as ‘ghostwriter’. Our sources are transcripts of conversational, open‐form interviews with over 60 ECRs from Britain, Malaysia, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Russia, and other countries. For an initial analysis of the transcripts, we used Google NotebookLM. An overarching and thematic summary of the data was produced in minutes, that would otherwise have occupied our research team for weeks. The unprompted text, immediately plausible and coherent, was regarded by all national interviewers as impressive. Here, using a relatively small, convenience sample, we compare the AI generated summaries both against our original data and those first impressions. We reflect upon our own experience of using AI and that of our interviewees. This paper is about how we used AI as an experiment, our reaction to it, how that chimes, resonates, echoes the experiences of the ECRs. It is a calibration for our future data analysis.

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