Can Generative AI Produce Novel Evidence?
Donal Khosrowi, Finola Finn · Philosophy of Science · 2025
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 constitute de novo synthetic evidence.