Reciprocal Collaboration: how lessons from convergence in GLAMs can enhance interdisciplinary AI research

Amber L. Cushing, Suzanne Little, Giulia Osti

The need for collaboration between diverse fields of research is increasingly recognised as important by research funding agencies. A significant driver of this need is the current revolution in artificial intelligence (AI) and related technologies. There is a growing interest in the potential impact of AI in different fields including the methodologies they use and the resulting advances in new knowledge, new access and enhanced productivity. However, there is also a corresponding increase in concern about the fundamentals of AI technologies and the way in which trans and/or interdisciplinary research is approached. The resulting collaboration too often ends up as a one-way street where the domain partner acts only as an information provider. For example, the contribution of the AHSS partner might be limited to providing insight about ethics and/or the technology partner may only provide a service to build applied AI-based solutions. In response to this problem, we propose a reciprocal approach to collaboration where both partners seek to understand, cooperate and identify jointly significant impacts. In this paper we explore this relationship between cultural heritage…