A Novice Standing on the Shoulders of Giants:Generative AI in Social Science Research
How to utilize generative AI to facilitate social science research has been one of the important issues of common concern for social science researchers recently.Against this backdrop,this paper examines the actual performance of generative AI in theory,methodology and research biases or errors from the practical needs of social science research in general through specific cases.Generative AI has great advantages in summarizing and reproducing existing materials.With its powerful computing power,it can help researchers save time and effort costs of information search by pre-processing massive online materials.However,generative AI finds it difficult to"understand"existing theories after"reading"them.It is also not good at comparing methods or developing new analytical tools.In addition,there are conspicuous biases or errors in the content it generates.Backed by existing human knowledge accumulation,generative AI can be said to stand on the shoulders of giants,but due to its own lack of mature capabilities for active innovation,generative AI is still a"novice"in terms of academic significance.Guiding and nurturing this"novice"is a task social science researchers need to think about and accomplish.
generative AIsocial science researchbias and errorcode
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