Beyond the Algorithm: Ethical Augmentation and the Researcher’s Role in an AI World

Beyond the Algorithm: Ethical Augmentation and the Researcher’s Role in an AI World

Artificial intelligence is now woven through the research lifecycle, from question formulation and literature review to data analysis and writing. Alongside this expansion sit difficult questions about authorship, rigour, and what it means for researchers to “think” with machines. This keynote introduces Ethical Augmentation as a framework for engaging with AI in ways that retain human expertise, integrity, and care at the centre of research practice. Rather than treating AI as a neutral tool or an inevitable disruptor, Ethical Augmentation positions it as a partner whose value depends on how researchers choose to use, question, and constrain it.

Drawing on examples from higher education and interdisciplinary research, the session explores how generative AI is reshaping ideas of originality, transparency, and epistemic authority. It highlights the emerging need for AI literacy that goes beyond tool skills to include ethical and epistemic awareness, and argues for research workflows that deliberately preserve human interpretive judgement. The keynote invites participants to reflect on how AI is already present in their own work, what boundaries they wish to set, and how institutions might support cultures of curiosity, criticality, and care. In doing so, it reframes AI not as the end of scholarship, but as an opportunity to renew its purpose.