AI in Academia – Balancing between Effectiveness and Responsibility

In this article, I examine how Generative AI (GenAI) is shaping the contemporary academic landscape through an overview of the most widely discussed themes. I focus not only on emerging opportunities and risks for academic work, including research, writing, and publishing, with particular attention to academic integrity, authorship, and scholarly voice, but also on the broader ethical implications of AI. I make a case for more awareness, reflection, and criticality and emphasise that the significance of AI goes beyond pragmatic concerns over productivity, effectiveness, and clarity as the topic is inherently tied to broader fundamental issues of ethics and social justice in both in the real world and global academic knowledge construction. This points to the shared responsibility of both developers and users of AI.