Academics Must Wake Up on AI (with Alexander Kustov)

The political scientist Alexander Kustov recently published a Substack post with a provocative claim: that AI can already do social science research better than most professors. The post went viral. It attracted more than a million views and over a thousand responses, many of them very angry. (Some people even demanded that Alex’s university fire him.)In this conversation, we talk about this controversy and the claims that triggered it, including:* What agentic AI tools like Claude Code and Codex can already do for research, from coding and data analysis to literature reviews, translation, and brainstorming, and why only around 20% of quantitative social scientists currently use them.* What best predicts whether researchers adopt or reject AI: ignorance, openness to experience, methodological background, or the awkward role of self-interest.* How much published academic research is genuinely mediocre, and whether the cause is laziness, lack of skill, or a broken incentive structure, with a detour through the replication crisis and some high-profile fraud cases.* Whether AI will raise the quality of research or simply flood the literature with more slop, and what journal editors could do about it.* Whether AI can be genuinely creative or only recombine what already exists, by way of Margaret Boden’s three kinds of creativity, Thomas Kuhn on paradigm shifts, and AlphaGo’s “Move 37”.* The fight over AI writing and detection tools like Pangram, and why current disclosure norms end up punishing the honest.* The angry response to Alex’s series, and what is really driving reflexive opposition to AI among academics.Conspicuous Cognition is a completely reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Links and further reading* Alexander Kustov — Alex’s homepage, with an overview of his research on immigration, public opinion, and effective governance.* Popular by Design — Alex’s Substack on public opinion, persuasion, and the politics of getting good ideas adopted.* Academics Need to Wake Up on AI — followed by a Part II and Part III* Pangram — the AI-detection tool discussed at length, which labels text as human, AI-assisted, or AI.* AlphaGo versus Lee Sedol — the 2016 match, including the famous “Move 37” that Henry raises as a candidate for genuinely transformative machine creativity.* Margaret Boden — the cognitive scientist whose distinction between combinational, exploratory, and transformative creativity frames part of the discussion.* The Structure of Scientific Revolutions — Thomas Kuhn’s account of normal science and paradigm shifts, referenced in the exchange about AI and discovery.* “AI Is a Better Researcher Than You” — The Chronicle of Higher Education‘s account of the controversy around Alex’s series.Transcript* Please note that this transcript is lightly AI-edited and may contain minor mistakes. Dan Williams: Welcome back. I’m Dan Williams, and I’m back with my co-host, Henry Shevlin. Today we are honoured to be joined by Bluesky’s favourite academic, Alexander Kustov. Alex is a political scientist at the University of Notre Dame and the author of one of my favourite Substacks, Popular by Design. His primary research is on immigration and public opinion, but that’s not really what we’re going to be talking about today. We’re going to be talking about a fascinating and hugely viral series he published at his Substack titled “Academics Need to Wake Up on AI,” about what AI can already do when it comes to research,