Discussion: ChatGPT and Science Communication

On April 24, 2023, the four centers funded by the VolkswagenStiftung Science Communication Cubed came together to examine the role of ChatGPT within the context of science communication.

Each center brought a speaker, who introduced their perspective on ChatGPT - for the day of the event, a discussion session happened afterwards.

The goal was to provide a place for cross-examination and knowledge sharing, focusing on science communication expertise and how it can be viewed from different angles.

Speakers:

Prof. Dr. Julika Griem, Principal Investigator at the Rhine Ruhr Center for Science Communication Research, delivered on the topic “AI and the Humanities and Social Sciences: Questions of Authorship and the Attribution of Individual Performance in the Science System.”

The Center for Rhetorical Science Communication Research on Artificial Intelligence (RHET AI) brought Prof. Olaf Kramer, Director of the Tübingen Science Communication Research Center, who spoke on “Patchwork Rhetoric. The Rhetorical Impact of Large Language Models.”

The Munich Science Communication Lab (MSCL) brought Dr. Jakob Ohme, the Research Group Lead at the Research Group Digital News Dynamics at the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society, who talked about “ChatGPT – the Illusion of Epistemic Authority.”

Steffen Brandt, the Project Lead Data Science and Machine Learning from opencampus.sh spoke on “Why Open Source is the Future Despite OpenAI’s Closed-source Approach” for the Kiel Science Communication Network (KielSCN).