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The journal Studies in Psychology / Estudios de Psicología calls the academic community to send manuscripts for a special issue on Artificial Intelligence.
Here you can download this call as a PDF.
Special Issue Theme and Orienting Questions
The looming perspective of actual artificial intelligence (AI) has been with us for a long time. Not only as a theoretical possibility actively pursued by a select few, be it for scientific, philosophical, technological or commercial goals, but more broadly, as a source of inspiration for narratives that have permeated our collective discourse.
However, up until now, there seemed to be no real reason for most people to actively engage with the thought of our machines increasingly resembling us and perhaps eventually surpassing us in skill, nor with the immediate and distant consequences of such a development. But now, the recent appearance of ChatGPT with its rapid improvements and more importantly, its having provided direct access to the use of these technologies to virtually every single person so inclined, has stressed how imminent this prospect now appears. We have only begun to intuit the extent of the disruption that this new reality will bring to industries and to our day-to-day lives, and while some scurry to make the most of the new “blink it or you miss it” opportunities, others are seriously pondering the seriousness of the risks it entails.
Insofar as the avowed goals of AI at the very least imply the creation of a new type of mind, psychology as a discipline has an enormous contribution to make to the ongoing discussion surrounding it. In this special issue of Studies in Psychology we seek to share and amplify a wide array of visions, so that researchers and theorists can add their voices in helping to frame the conversation in a way that makes good use of the accumulated wisdom and know-how of our field. This call is certainly not only open to those thinkers who are already working in AI-adjacent areas, but rather to all psychologists seeking to offer their perspective and experience and willing to engage seriously with the questions brought forth by AI approaching its maturity.
The clash of a discipline as variegated as ours with a technology as new and open-ended as this one could inspire such a multitude of approaches that an attempt may feel dizzying or unassailable, so here are is a (far from exhaustive) list of orienting questions that can hopefully help spark a personal reflection:
- Once a cornerstone of the philosophical conversations surrounding the pursuit of AI, is the Turing test still relevant to its current discussion? What actionable lessons have been learned after seven decades of intellectuals musing on it?
- How can we best sift through more than a century of scientific psychological insight and discoveries in order to distill our gathered knowledge in a way that is most impactful to steer and orient AI efforts?
- What have we already learned from the experience of interacting with early proof-of-concept proto-artificial intelligences and what does this reveal about both such systems and the humans who interact with them?
- How seriously should we take the prospect of AI becoming an existential risk and what course of action should we embrace in order to forestall this possibility? How can these concerns be better communicated to the public?
- Is it important for people with no technical expertise in the field of AI to add their voices to the conversation and how can they best do so? How can we canalize the input and concern of the community at large so that it complements mainstream AI efforts?
- As AI programs grow more complex and powerful, the discussion of their potential consciousness, agency and selfhood will become unavoidable. Are there ways to tackle this dilemma so that our natural capacity for empathy is not hijacked into —as the case of Joseph Weizenbaum’s ELIZA program revealed— projecting a mind onto things that don’t have one?
- What have we learned as a discipline about human coordination that can contribute in the quest of aligning human values with the goals of these newly emerging systems? How can we ensure that the outcome of their appearance will be a net positive for the world, and not just for a few actors (if any)?
- Whether we like it or not, certain fictional stories —particularly cherished blockbuster franchises such as The Terminator— seem to operate as veritable Schelling points in the global conversation on AI and its development. But are they helping or hurting our collective understanding of these coming technologies? And, in case of the latter, how can we replace them?
- Is the extensive research of human emotion a valuable contribution to AI? Has it been applied in the design of thinking systems? If not, how could it be fruitfully taken into account in the future of this technology?
- As historians may avow technologies, both social and material, can be lost. Are there likewise discoveries and lines of thought in the history of AI that are currently “lost” to us and that should be remembered and brought into the limelight?
- What ethical factors should be given the highest consideration regarding our interaction with intelligent systems, perhaps especially with regards to their autonomy?
- Will the impressive visual products of tools such as DALL-E and Midjourney as well the prose written by GPT-4 force us to reconsider the notions of creativity and authorhood?
Types of articles accepted (related to the subject of this call for papers)
Theoretical discussion or positioning articles. They must defend and support the position of an emerging paradigm related to the subject of the monographic issue. Maximum length: 6000 words.
Empirical research articles. They may present new data, new methods, or any combination of both, related to the subject of the monographic issue. Maximum length: 4800 words.
Brief research reports. They are expected to present empirical results coming from new investigations, and will be positively considered inasmuch as they represent innovations in either approach or method. Experimental results from recently completed doctoral theses related to the subject of the monographic issue are especially welcome. Maximum length: 2600 palabras.
Research micro-reports. They may present empirical results from brief experiments of general interest related to the subject of the monographic issue. Maximum length: 1100 words.
Text reviews. They may discuss, criticize or complement articles related to the subject of the monographic issue, both for current texts or classic texts that have not been translated into Spanish or English. Maximum length: 1100 words.
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