Dr. Brandon Boesch, a philosophy professor and scholar of science and ethics, has published a thought-provoking essay in Aeon Magazine titled “More-than-human science. When AI takes over the practice of science, we will likely find the results strange and incomprehensible. Should we worry?” In the essay, Dr. Boesch delves into the evolving relationship between artificial intelligence and scientific discovery, raising fundamental questions about the nature, trustworthiness, and future of scientific knowledge.
The essay explores how AI systems are increasingly involved in the processes of observation, hypothesis generation, data analysis, and even theory formation across a range of scientific disciplines. Dr. Boesch highlights that as these machines begin to outperform human scientists in certain areas, we may be forced to confront the consequences of depending on methods that are opaque and unintelligible to human reasoning.
A central theme of the essay is the idea of ‘more-than-human science’ — a term Boesch uses to describe the transformation of science from a fundamentally human enterprise to one influenced and potentially dominated by non-human agents like AI. This shift raises philosophical and ethical questions about the legitimacy and reliability of machine-generated scientific knowledge, particularly if humans can no longer fully understand or verify the reasoning behind it.
Boesch invites readers to reflect on whether the value of scientific knowledge lies solely in its predictive power or also in its comprehensibility. He warns of a future where scientific progress may depend on trust in systems whose operations are beyond human understanding, potentially diminishing science’s explanatory and educational roles.
The essay is a timely contribution to ongoing debates about the role of artificial intelligence in society and the epistemological challenges it poses to human-centered disciplines. Dr. Boesch’s work serves as an important reminder of the need for interdisciplinary dialogue as science continues to evolve in the age of AI.
Source: https:// – Courtesy of the original publisher.
