Istanbul Gelisim University IISBF SosyoCom: Monthly Events and News Bulletin (Issue: 26, February 2023)

Abstract

THE FUTURE OF ACADEMY

Can academic texts be written by an artificial intelligence that can produce knowledge by combining the academic literature of all past science fields? Such questions have been raised more and more with the recently emerging and popular artificial intelligence application ChatGPT. Although the answer to this question was thought to be close to yes at first, the course of business changed as the use of ChatGPT became widespread and it was observed in which areas it worked. Examining the impact of ChatGPT on academic texts can be carried out within the framework of a few theoretical but not boring considerations. First of all, it is envisaged that the application in question can automate the writing of academic texts. However, both AI technologies and automation technologies, on the one hand, limit the job opportunities involving the labor factor, on the other hand, they create new job opportunities. These two opposing effects arise only as a result of the strong substitution between the work done by the labor force and the automated work. Well, is it a process that can only be automated to obtain scientific output using the knowledge of the past? If we had access to all the knowledge of the universe, the answer to this question could be yes, and we could automate and redirect academic texts to AI-based technologies. However, scientific knowledge does not allow for complete substitution, since it has a creative structure that is constantly expanding with observations that everyone looks at but some can relate to.

If we look again at the question we asked at the beginning, we can better understand how the answer turns into a “no”. Academic texts with a creative process are far from being an automated process. However, in academic copywriting, artificial intelligence-based applications such as ChatGPT can assist this process with a complementary effect. Considering the developments in this context, it is seen that ChatGPT, whose assistance was received in the articles written, was added as a second author. Although we do not know exactly what the effects of more advanced artificial intelligence-based applications will be on academia in the future, it can be predicted that the work of academics will become easier and mutual cooperation will increase.