Exploring generative AI in social sciences: A case study of selected universities in Karachi, Pakistan

Abstract

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has gained popularity in the social sciences across the world. Its advanced models to generate high-quality content, texts, images, and videos on a single prompt for the user has full potential to revolutionize the traditional methods in the social sciences. The application of AI tools in the social sciences has drastically altered traditional research and writing techniques. The development of ChatGPT, conversational chatbots, and Deep Neural Networks (DNN)-based techniques have made exploring data sets, writing summaries and literature reviews, analyzing data, and performing other tasks relatively simple. The advantages and prospective benefits of GenAI in education are acknowledged by researchers, but some grave concerns are also brought up, including data bias, costs, deep fakes, transparency, ethical and intellectual property rights, etc. In Pakistan, social scientists have diverse opinions regarding the use of GenAI in higher education. The study aims to investigate the use of GenAI tools in higher education. The research is exploratory. Both qualitative and quantitative methods are employed in this study. A survey of chosen academics from public and private universities in Karachi is conducted to get primary data. The results of the study may be helpful in the integration of GenAI in education.