Artificial intelligence meets is researchers: Can it replace us?

Given we live in an era with accelerating digitization and rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI), AI may eventually automate more job tasks. However, researchers have scarcely if at all critically analyzed how AI will automate such tasks and what professions it will automate more than others. Some studies suggest that AI cannot conduct highly creative and knowledge-intensive tasks. Yet, AI algorithms have generated creative art pieces that even art critics could not distinguish from human-drawn paintings. As IS (and most other) researchers, we pride ourselves on our work’s scarcity, novelty, and creativity. In this context, we report on a panel at the 40th International Conference for Information Systems that debated whether AI can and will replace our major activity, IS research, or even IS researchers themselves.