Post-Generative AI – We Need to Talk

It no longer leaves me in peace, because the speed at which AI is developing is genuinely alarming. I mean, throughout my entire (scientific) life I have argued that technology does not actually determine society, but rather that we are simply always too slow to respond to groundbreaking or disruptive technologies. It feels as though we are just rushing to catch up, reacting more than we are still actively shaping things. Only now I have an uneasy feeling that the pace really is too fast, driven by mutual escalation and attempts to outdo one another. In my view, things are crumbling everywhere, but perhaps I should try to describe it differently.

My personal trigger was an email from a journal editor (perhaps it was no longer even a real person), in which I, as a scientist, was offered a co-authorship in exchange for payment. Wait, what, I thought – I can more or less pick the title of the publication, transfer the money, and tomorrow I am a co-author and my scientific metrics go up. Of course, if you take a look at the journal, the very first publication is AI-generated. The references are wrong; I no longer even form a judgment about the content. This fits seamlessly with other events, such as the growing number of AI-generated publications I am asked to review, which I reject and which are nevertheless published. Or scientists reporting that for project proposals these days they only send in CVs, and the next day an 80-page proposal is on the table. Others try to filter out AI-generated proposals by setting AI agents on them. Deliverables in EU projects are now always delivered on time by all partners. Something that was unthinkable just a few years ago, except that it is AI-generated and it takes days and weeks to clean up the nonsense again.

In short, I am not only questioning the scientific system with all its quality assurance mechanisms; rather, I am asking myself what are we actually doing right now? What is this science anyway? I mean, if I can send the agents off to comb through the literature and generate the hypotheses for me, then pour them into a project proposal, collect and analyze the data, publish, and so on and so forth … And yes, the worst part: the result may not even be all that bad, or may well have a legitimacy worth discussing. Who says that what we have been doing up to now was always so flawless and honest?

These stories can be continued seamlessly or applied to entire professional fields. Software engineering, for instance, will soon be nothing more than steering agents without ever having written a single line of code oneself. The latest reports show that within days, even hours, we are able to have any software generated – so no matter how cool my idea is and even if I bring new software to market, everyone is able to replicate it immediately. Even the argument that it is about defining a process no longer holds; the agents can work that out among themselves as well.

I had also always claimed that technology as such is value-neutral, because it always takes people to make something good or bad out of it. Hm? Yes, sure, but if that, too, increasingly happens via agents, what will they do? And what if we implement AI everywhere, in every car, in every piece of control software, in the military domain, in every humanoid robot? Question upon question piles up before me, and I don’t think they can simply be brushed aside.

So what I do not want is to paint a bleak picture, but I do feel a need to reflect on the „post-generative AI“ era. On necessities, rules of the game, and mechanisms that make living together in society possible and also worth living. To this end, we have now put this website online, and we are calling for a discourse. What do we have in mind?

• Let us collect examples of absurdities but at the same time also of good solutions. Send them to us and we will integrate them, ideally with a link at contribute
• Share our site and talk about it, or start the discourse; if we pool our thoughts together, we will see possibilities more quickly
• And of course, send us your suggestions

Panta rhei – may everything flow in the right direction.