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September 10, 2025Philosophy of Science1 citationsOpen Access

Can Generative AI Produce Novel Evidence?

DKDonal KhosrowiLeibniz University Hannover FFFinola FinnUniversity of Luxembourg

Key Points

Generative AI can potentially produce novel evidence for historical research.
The paper highlights the possibility of GenAI creating higher-order evidence as defined by Parker (2022).
Responses indicate that GenAI could create de novo synthetic evidence beyond mere hypotheses.
This inquiry may reshape our understanding of how generative AI contributes to knowledge generation.

Abstract

Abstract Researchers in history and the historical sciences explore the use of generative AI (GenAI) systems for reconstructing destroyed artifacts. This paper poses a novel question: can such GenAI systems generate evidence that provides new knowledge about the world or can they only produce hypotheses that we might seek evidence for ? Exploring responses to this question, the paper argues that 1) GenAI outputs can at least be understood as higher-order evidence (Parker 2022) and 2) may also produce de novo synthetic evidence.

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Khosrowi et al. (Wed,) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/68c19f9154b1d3bfb60db08d https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1017/psa.2025.10123

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