Human intelligence, knowledge creation, and iterative critique must remain at the heart of academic inquiry even as artificial intelligence accelerates research output, Amanda Murdie, dean of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, said at the second AI & Society speakers series event sponsored by the College.

“I see our value as academics wrapped up in what we produce, and I see that wrapped up in the creation of wisdom, which is incredibly linked to how we critique, how we understand each other, and how we refine our work through an iterative process,” Murdie said at the event, which focused on the impact of AI on research.

At the event, held at Georgia Tech Hotel and Conference Center on Nov. 4, 2026, Murdie  was joined by Sebastian Porsdam Mann, assistant professor at the University of Copenhagen Center for Advanced Studies in Bioscience Innovation Law; Sarah Salter, president of the Council of Editors of Learned Journal and professor and director of the Writing Program at Emory University; and Dan Reiter, the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Political Science at Emory and co-editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Political Science.

Richard Utz, IAC senior associate dean, opened the evening’s discussion and said he deals with these issues every day.

"Personally, I must say when we decided on this topic for this evening, I immediately thought about all the things that I'm dealing with on a daily basis with my students and in my classes. What is the kind of research, what is the kind of scholarship that we're going to produce in the future?” he said.

The panelists said that while AI holds promise for academic researchers, higher education leaders must establish clear disclosure standards and protect space for human experience and discovery.

“The biggest issue I see right now is the devaluing of the time that it takes humans to do things well,” Salter said. “I worry that we are ceding a lot of the ground of human value to arguments about speed and how fast this makes things possible.”

Reiter agreed, saying that while AI can be a powerful tool for data analysis, for instance, it cannot and should not replace human inquisitiveness.

"The biggest challenge is that AI destroys the joy of discovery,” he said. “The challenge of AI is if it starts to do everything for you, you do less and less, and that saps the joy out of doing what we do."

Porsdam Mann suggested researchers consider AI more as a tool to raise the bar for research quality, using it to prototype ideas and provide rigorous fact-checking.

“One of the ways I like to think about scholarship produced with or by AI is by analogy to engineering a prototype,” he said. “It gives a roughly shaped, fully developed version of the idea.”

“AI can also be used to enforce rigor,” he said. “I use AI tools to cross-reference every citation and statement in my papers against source literature.”

Porsdam Mann said that, for instance, up to 25% of human-written citations in biomedical papers contain errors or misrepresentations.

“AI verification tools can help eliminate these errors, and journals would benefit from providing automated fact-checking services using internal, secure models,” he said.

Ultimately, Salter said, it’s up to higher education to ensure the sense of urgency toward AI adoption so prevalent in business does not creep into every corner of academia, too.

“Universities are distinct from commercial industry,” she said. “Higher education leadership has a responsibility to protect space for non-AI inquiry, allowing scholars to evaluate knowledge-making values and maintain diverse approaches to research without forcing commercial AI adoption."

The next AI & Society event, “AI, Human Empathy, and Relationships: Is AI a Better Partner?,” is scheduled for Feb. 10. The event, at the Historic Academy of Medicine, will explore how AI conversation and companionship are affecting human connection, empathy, intimacy, and relationships.