Caitlin Ailis Roach: “Use AI as a tool - but we still need to work independently.”

Caitlin Ailis Roach:“Use AI as a tool - but we still need to work independently.”A conversation about AI, research, language, thinking — and what actually creates real impact.“I am proud to be part of an open access institution -as a daughter of a librarian, access to knowledge has always been personal to me.”Caitlin leads publications at European Alliance for Innovation and works daily with research that shapes the future.She openly says that up to 70% of scientific papers today are written with the help of AI.And that’s exactly why she highlights something that is no longer obvious - not becoming dependent on AI and not losing our own thinking.Caitlin loves languages. She speaks French and Slovak fluently and is learning Turkish and German.Maybe that’s why AI-generated content often feels flat to her without nuance, without life.After France, she moved to the United Kingdom, specifically to Lancaster, where we also talked about accents in English and how language shapes perception.She originally comes from the land of The Wizard of Oz, where the line “there’s no place like home” comes from.She has been living in Slovakia for 10 years and knows Bratislava better than many locals. If you want to know where to go for coffee or where to host a meeting, ask Caitlin.But her beginnings here were not easy.It’s also interesting how she compares the way we treat foreigners in Slovakia and how they are treated in the United States. Her perspective is surprising.And one more thing that stayed with me: we, Slovaks, are often overly critical of the cities we come from.From her perspective, Kansas and Slovakia have more in common than we would expect.We talk about research. I asked her directly:how much of research today is actually fake, how much is AI-assisted and whether AI is also being used to review and control research quality.And also:how long it actually takes for a breakthrough discovery to be used in real life.And how the need for control, verification, and validation is increasing as the volume of research and the use of AI -continues to grow.A lot of research never makes it out. It gets rejected or never applied in real life.There are platforms that openly deal with research quality like Retraction Watch. An independent watchdog tracking retracted and questionable scientific work: https://retractionwatch.com/Interestingly, Slovakia doesn’t appear there as often - it’s not as big of an issue here as in some other countries.At the same time, there is growing frustration in academia around the misuse of AI, not as a tool, but as a shortcut.And yet, we also talk about the opposite:AI used well f.e.: as a tool to support healthier, better-functioning cities.Then there’s another interesting phenomenon: tortured phrases.Distorted, badly translated or AI-generated expressions — often unintentionally funny.If you want to explore them:https://www.irit.fr/~Guillaume.Cabanac/problematic-paper-screener/problematic-phrases.htmlAnd maybe the most important idea at the end:Caitlin believes the future of science is in Open access.But there is still a paradox: many research projects are funded by public money, for example from the EU, yet access to them is still paid. The public funds the research, but cannot access it.