AI as an accelerator for defining new problems that transcends boundaries.

Abstract

Interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, convergence, and No-Boundary Thinking (NBT) research are methodology and technology-agnostic approaches to problem solving. The focus is on defining problems informed by access to multiple knowledge sources and expert perspectives across different domains, with the goal of accessing all available knowledge sources and perspectives. While access to all available knowledge sources and perspectives could be seen as a difficult to attain objective, with the recent rise of AI we might be closer to approaching this goal. We review several examples of methodologies and technologies that have been used to put these strategies into action, but the primary focus of this paper is on how recent advances in AI now enable a quantum leap forward in defining new problems. By leveraging the capacity of AI to synthesize knowledge from multiple domains, these tools can be used to propose multiple candidate problem definitions. AI is uniquely able to draw upon many more knowledge sources than any individual-or even a very large team-could. Coupled with human intelligence, better problems can be defined to address complex scholarly or societal challenges.