Generative AI Should Not Be Allowed in Psychological Research

Abstract

The author explains in this article why generative artificial intelligence (genAI) should be banned from use in psychological research. It is a form of cheating and therefore unethical because it represents artificial aiding of human effort and draws on the uncredited work of others. Even if this prohibition is ignored, as it has been by most psychology journals to date, I argue that genAI should be banned because it degrades the quality of scientific research and is likely to undermine the learning of good research skills. I will exemplify genAI’s inadequacy for research with a critique of two recently published studies investigating its capacity to generate new hypotheses in psychology.