AI Knowledge and Reasoning: Emulating Expert Creativity in Scientific Research

Abstract

We investigate whether modern AI can emulate expert creativity in complex scientific endeavors. We introduce novel methodology that utilizes original research articles published after the AI's training cutoff, ensuring no prior exposure, mitigating concerns of rote memorization and prior training. The AI are tasked with redacting findings, predicting outcomes from redacted research, and assessing prediction accuracy against reported results. Analysis on 589 published studies in four leading psychology journals over a 28-month period, showcase the AI's proficiency in understanding specialized research, deductive reasoning, and evaluating evidentiary alignment--cognitive hallmarks of human subject matter expertise and creativity. These findings suggest the potential of general-purpose AI to transform academia, with roles requiring knowledge-based creativity become increasingly susceptible to technological substitution.