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Earma 2023: ‘In five years artificial intelligence will write better grant proposals than research managers’
Artificial intelligence programmes such as ChatGPT could take over vast swathes of grant-related work currently done by researchers and research managers, the 2023 meeting of the European Association of Research Managers and Administrators has been told.
“Within three or maybe five years, AI will write better research proposals in five minutes than this entire hall could write in a year,” Nik Claesen, the association’s managing director, told a packed hall.
But he said this also means that “unbelievable opportunities will come our way [as] there will be new ways to analyse data, collaborate and address the big challenges of our time”.
Research managers will have to adapt to this “exponential” rate of change by doing what AI cannot, he said, such as forging connections to facilitate research collaboration.
“I firmly believe that in research management, we will be important enablers of this transition, and the right course for policymakers and researchers is to invest in two things: people and systems,” he added.
Research Professional News is media partner for the Earma 2023 conference in Prague. Read all the coverage here.