TY - JOUR

T1 - Decentring the discoverer

T2 - how AI helps us rethink scientific discovery

AU - Clark, Elinor

AU - Khosrowi Djen-Gheschlaghi, Donal

N1 - Funding Information: Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL. This study was funded by Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (Grant No. 91814091).

PY - 2022/12

Y1 - 2022/12

N2 - This paper investigates how intuitions about scientific discovery using artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to improve our understanding of scientific discovery more generally. Traditional accounts of discovery have been agent-centred: they place emphasis on identifying a specific agent who is responsible for conducting all, or at least the important part, of a discovery process. We argue that these accounts experience difficulties capturing scientific discovery involving AI and that similar issues arise for human discovery. We propose an alternative, collective-centred view as superior for understanding discovery, with and without AI. This view maintains that discovery is performed by a collective of agents and entities, each making contributions that differ in significance and character, and that attributing credit for discovery depends on various finer-grained properties of the contributions made. Detailing its conceptual resources, we argue that this view is considerably more compelling than its agent-centred alternative. Considering and responding to several theoretical and practical challenges, we point to concrete avenues for further developing the view we propose.

AB - This paper investigates how intuitions about scientific discovery using artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to improve our understanding of scientific discovery more generally. Traditional accounts of discovery have been agent-centred: they place emphasis on identifying a specific agent who is responsible for conducting all, or at least the important part, of a discovery process. We argue that these accounts experience difficulties capturing scientific discovery involving AI and that similar issues arise for human discovery. We propose an alternative, collective-centred view as superior for understanding discovery, with and without AI. This view maintains that discovery is performed by a collective of agents and entities, each making contributions that differ in significance and character, and that attributing credit for discovery depends on various finer-grained properties of the contributions made. Detailing its conceptual resources, we argue that this view is considerably more compelling than its agent-centred alternative. Considering and responding to several theoretical and practical challenges, we point to concrete avenues for further developing the view we propose.

KW - Agent-centred view

KW - AI

KW - AlphaFold

KW - Collective-centred view

KW - Scientific discovery

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85141190469&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1007/s11229-022-03902-9

DO - 10.1007/s11229-022-03902-9

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85141190469

VL - 200

JO - SYNTHESE

JF - SYNTHESE

SN - 0039-7857

IS - 6

M1 - 463

ER -