A single research paper may impact hundreds of disciplines. Academics are busy people whose work is very time-consuming: huge bodies of research must be synthesised, hypotheses generated and data collected and processed. Their duties usually also include preparation of pedagogical materials and delivering lectures.
Automation may help
Today algorithms are fundamentally changing industries. There is more and more automation taking place at an increasingly quicker pace. Academic papers can be produced much faster; their preparation need not take several years. As automation can replace much of the work of academics, the potential exists for a sharp increase in academic productivity.
Today, automation is dramatically improving the dissemination of information. There is, for example, one project aiming at the creation of automated authoring tools that could write textbooks for people who speak languages that are used only in remote parts of the world. There is a lack of pedagogical materials in developing countries and this project would solve that problem. It would also make it easier for farmers to obtain timely weather reports.
Algorithms can find multiple solutions
Where else in the academic content creation chain could automation help to increase the scope of knowledge? Now algorithms can be created that read information and formulate opinions. Different algorithms are able to formulate different opinions and thus together help us find the best approach to a certain subject or topic. This is the claim made in an article from the INSEAD business school.
Algorithms can actually synthesise automatically items from different fields of research. Papers with a typical structure, containing a question, hypotheses, studies and conclusions, often rely on citing vast bodies of research. But no one has the time to read all the available medical literature, browse through all existing patent databases or compare everything from management science databases. Algorithms can facilitate that.
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