Authorship in the age of artificial intelligence (AI): Ethics letter number four (4)
TL;DR
The letter argues that AI does not eliminate the author; rather, it radically reconfigures authorship as a form of epistemic stewardship grounded in context, ethics, positionality, and intellectual judgement, which argues for reforms in peer review and editorial processes to distinguish between linguistic fluency and genuine conceptual depth.
Abstract
The proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) writing tools has fundamentally disrupted established conceptions of authorship, knowledge production, and scholarly responsibility across all academic disciplines. As AI systems grow capable of generating coherent academic prose, synthesising literature, and structuring arguments, scholars worldwide face urgent questions about the integrity of their intellectual contributions. This letter was itself produced using AI assistance, in a deliberate and transparent manner, for three purposes: first, to demonstrate that AI has reached a level of capability where it can meaningfully support substantive scholarly work; second, to model an acceptable and ethically responsible method of using AI in academic writing; and third, to accelerate the writing process by delegating minor technical roles including sentence construction, paragraphing, spelling, word choice, and formatting to AI, thereby freeing authors to concentrate on the higher order analytical, theoretical, and contextual roles where human intellectual contribution is irreplaceable. In writing this letter, Claude.ai was prompted to minimise AI typical phrasing and to identify and remove any content that risks perpetuating colonial assumptions or reproducing epistemological hierarchies harmful to knowledge systems from the Global South. The letter argues that AI does not eliminate the author; rather, it radically reconfigures authorship as a form of epistemic stewardship grounded in context, ethics, positionality, and intellectual judgement. Drawing on decolonial theory, epistemic justice frameworks, and Indigenous research methodologies, the letter contends that scholars from the Global South are especially vulnerable to the homogenising tendencies of AI generated text, which risks flattening situated knowledge, marginalising non-Western epistemologies, and reinforcing existing global knowledge hierarchies. A human and AI collaborative model is proposed, repositioning the scholar as the central epistemic authority who governs meaning, ensures contextual integrity, and fulfills ethical accountability. The letter further argues for reforms in peer review and editorial processes to distinguish between linguistic fluency and genuine conceptual depth and advances a new proposition that scholars from the Global South must not remain passive consumers of AI but must actively contribute to its development and disrupt its colonising potential at all levels of society. Current and previous volumes are available at: https://ajsw.africasocialwork.net