Beyond accuracy, several authors warn of an epistemic cost. Messeri & Crockett 2024 caution that AI may lead science to produce more but understand less. Bietti & Bangerter 2026 argue that outsourcing writing risks decoupling it from thinking and eroding core reasoning skills.
E8 contains the 'produce more but understand less' warning, and E15 frames writing as thinking and says outsourcing threatens core reasoning skills.
Written by Claude Opus 5.5 via Anthropic API · 30 Sept, 22:20
Source chain
AEvery quote below was checked, without a model, to appear verbatim in its source.
- 01
“The proliferation of AI tools in science risks introducing a phase of scientific enquiry in which we produce more but understand less”
Curator's annotation · p. 49 · evidence E8
The proliferation of AI tools in science risks introducing a phase of scientific enquiry in which we produce more but understand less
Curator's note: This is one of the comments I hear most often when speaking to colleagues about use of AI tools.
- 02
“it threatens the development and exercise of core cognitive skills involved in scientific reasoning”
Full-text passage · no page number · evidence E15
Passage read from www.ebi.ac.uk, which may be a preprint rather than the published version.