Open research in the age of "AI": Piercing the mythology

In-person short talk for the Bristol Data Week 2026 event "Open Research in the Age of AI" at 13:00-17:00 UTC+1 on 4 June 2026: 

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/open-research-in-the-age-of-ai-in-person-tickets-1986336528026

https://web.archive.org/web/20260526160431/https://www.bristol.ac.uk/golding/events/data-week/

In which I shared my reflections on: 

1. How the mythology of so-called "artificial intelligence (AI)" is worse than useless
2. Large language models (LLMs) give us "illusions of understanding"
3. Academic publishers, oil companies, and tobacco companies use similar tactics to divide us and distract from systemic problems

Related talks I gave on this topic are linked in the "Additional details: Related works" section below.

Here is an incomplete list of further reading: 

Bowers, J. S., Puebla, G., Thorat, S., Tsetsos, K., & Ludwig, C. J. H. (2025, June 26). On the misuse of LLMs as models of mind: A case study of Centaur. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/v9w37_v2

Cruz, N. (2026) Illusions of Understanding from Outsourcing Thinking to LLMs. Comput Brain Behav. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42113-026-00288-6

Guersenzvaig, A., & Monett, D. (2026). When Responsibility Enables Ethics Washing: Responsible Realism as a Critical Lens for Probing Institutional Recommendations for the Use of AI in Higher Education. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19345901

Guest, O., Suarez, M., Müller, B., van Meerkerk, E., Oude Groote Beverborg, A., de Haan, R., Reyes Elizondo, A., Blokpoel, M., Scharfenberg, N., Kleinherenbrink, A., Camerino, I., Woensdregt, M., Monett, D., Brown, J., Avraamidou, L., Alenda-Demoutiez, J., Hermans, F., & van Rooij, I. (2025). Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17065099

Guest, O., Suarez, M., & van Rooij, I. (2025). Towards Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacies. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17786243

Guest, O. (2026). What Does ‘Human-Centred AI’ Mean? Behavioral Sciences, 16(4), 583. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs16040583

Messeri, L., Crockett, M.J. Artificial intelligence and illusions of understanding in scientific research. Nature 627, 49–58 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07146-0

Monett, D., Grigorescu, B. (2024) Deconstructing the AI Myth: Fallacies and Harms of Algorithmification. European Conference on e-Learning, 23(1). https://doi.org/10.34190/ecel.23.1.2759

https://stopgenai.com/academia-and-research/

https://www.aaup.org/reports-publications/aaup-policies-reports/topical-reports/artificial-intelligence-and-academic