Who Owns Creativity and Who Does the Work? Trade-offs in LLM-Supported Research Ideation
Fuente:
arXiv
Salvato in:
| Autori principali: | , , , , , |
|---|---|
| Natura: | Preprint |
| Pubblicazione: |
2026
|
| Soggetti: | |
| Accesso online: | |
| Tags: |
Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
|
| _version_ | 1866911382812753920 |
|---|---|
| author | Liu, Houjiang Choi, Yujin Gautam, Sanjana Jaffe, Gabriel Rieh, Soo Young Lease, Matthew |
| author_facet | Liu, Houjiang Choi, Yujin Gautam, Sanjana Jaffe, Gabriel Rieh, Soo Young Lease, Matthew |
| contents | LLM-based agents offer new potential to accelerate science and reshape research work. However, the quality of researcher contributions can vary significantly depending on human ability to steer agent behaviors. How can we best use these tools to augment scientific creativity without undermining aspects of contribution and ownership that drive research? To investigate this, we developed an agentic research ideation system integrating three roles -- Ideator, Writer, and Evaluator -- across three control levels -- Low, Medium, and Intensive. Our mixed-methods study with 54 researchers suggests three key findings in how LLM-based agents reshape scientific creativity: 1) perceived creativity support does not simply increase linearly with greater control; 2) human effort shifts from ideating to verifying ideas; and 3) ownership becomes a negotiated outcome between human and AI. Our findings suggest that LLM agent design should emphasize researcher empowerment, fostering a sense of ownership over strong ideas rather than reducing researchers to operating an automated AI-driven process. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_12152 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Who Owns Creativity and Who Does the Work? Trade-offs in LLM-Supported Research Ideation Liu, Houjiang Choi, Yujin Gautam, Sanjana Jaffe, Gabriel Rieh, Soo Young Lease, Matthew Human-Computer Interaction LLM-based agents offer new potential to accelerate science and reshape research work. However, the quality of researcher contributions can vary significantly depending on human ability to steer agent behaviors. How can we best use these tools to augment scientific creativity without undermining aspects of contribution and ownership that drive research? To investigate this, we developed an agentic research ideation system integrating three roles -- Ideator, Writer, and Evaluator -- across three control levels -- Low, Medium, and Intensive. Our mixed-methods study with 54 researchers suggests three key findings in how LLM-based agents reshape scientific creativity: 1) perceived creativity support does not simply increase linearly with greater control; 2) human effort shifts from ideating to verifying ideas; and 3) ownership becomes a negotiated outcome between human and AI. Our findings suggest that LLM agent design should emphasize researcher empowerment, fostering a sense of ownership over strong ideas rather than reducing researchers to operating an automated AI-driven process. |
| title | Who Owns Creativity and Who Does the Work? Trade-offs in LLM-Supported Research Ideation |
| topic | Human-Computer Interaction |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.12152 |