Can specific experiences serve as a parameter for different research professionals?

Based on studies of AI, the researcher highlights the need to assimilate the various dimensions of digital life and their influence on science careers

Camila De Paoli Leporace

People sat around a wooden table in a naturally lit environment chatting and taking notes. The scene suggests a moment of exchange, collaboration and reflection in a collective work or research setting

I’ve always worked in digital communication—I’m a journalist, and throughout my career I’ve engaged in projects in the area of education that led me to completing a master’s degree and PhD in this field.

I started researching cognition and digital technologies during my master’s, then as part of my PhD I investigated intersections between human learning and machine learning (one aspect of artificial intelligence – AI).

The fact that the environment matters for learning is a premise for my research, as are intersubjective relationships and emotions. Furthermore, it is an assumption of the research that the body underpins cognitive activity.

Interestingly, researching cognition through the lens of enactivism (or enactive cognition—the creation of meanings from lived experience) has brought me not only specific knowledge in a particular field, but also a new way of understanding artificial intelligence and, above all, humans—at a time when algorithms demand so much of our attention.

If you really open yourself up to the discoveries potentially involved in the research process, you can undergo something far beyond academic training.

I appreciate that becoming a researcher changed the way in which I see the world, act, and make decisions.

Based on my research, which has transformed into implied attitudes in the way I conduct my personal and professional life, I have endeavored to build something truly useful to people.

Since completing my PhD I have therefore been developing a multi-language science dissemination and AI communication strategy.

Artificial Intelligence and education

I strive to communicate the various dimensions of AI in a way that is understandable and accessible to professionals from different fields, especially educators. AI in education and education for AI are of particular interest to me.

As well as my efforts to communicate AI, I also think it’s important—with a view to supporting other trainee researchers—to share the challenges they face in Brazil today. After all, a career in science is no longer as “guaranteed” as it once seemed.

Once upon a time, completing a PhD could almost guarantee you a full university professorship. However, the path between a PhD and that much-coveted stability is longer and more punishing today.

In this complex scenario, the questions are more varied and the answers less obvious. What does it mean to have a solid career? Or to really have stability? Can you be free to research what you want and how you want?

The only certainty, in my eyes, is that career paths vary according to what you plan to do, and the spaces you seek to occupy along the way.

A strong image in enactivism is that of the path that is laid as it is followed. It is not ready and waiting to be followed, but rather depends on each attitude and decision made on the way.

What is “right” for one researcher, student, or professional may differ greatly from what seems “right” to others.

When working with research, you have to be willing to face the fact that the path has not yet been laid; this requires commitment, dedication, and creativity to find solutions to the multiple challenges that arise.

Stylized hands with fingers that simulate different people walking — Camila Leporace: “The path is built as it is followed. It is not ready and waiting to be followed, but rather depends on each attitude and decision made on the way” | Imagem: Jason Yuen /Unsplash

Moment of transition

We are clearly in a time of transition, where our models have become saturated. Several complex problems are affecting us as a society and, consequently, affecting research.

If you are a researcher or want to work in the field, your professional life involves supporting the creation of new “rules” that help steer not only research, but also research careers, and this demands great willingness and persistence.

This means not only understanding and accepting the difficult environment of research and academia, but contributing to its transformation.

Many in the world of research still have an old-school mindset, working on the notion of a “guaranteed” job, and do not really appreciate what a budding researcher has to do today to stay in research.

It’s very nice, on the other hand, when we see established researchers in their fields making an effort to help open up possibilities for new generations.

Those embarking on a research career, even if they already bring experience from other areas of work, find themselves immersed in discovering alternative paths, which might, for example, involve simultaneously working on several fronts to survive.

This reality may lead to the researcher being judged as someone who lacks focus, or is hyperfocused, but this is often inaccurate; it is simply a matter of survival.

New scientists are engulfed in uncertainty; a set of circumstances marked by the precariousness of research work, and the difficulty of being afforded adequate remuneration and working conditions that ensure more peace of mind (a scenario not exclusive to academia, but that affects those that work in countless different sectors).

Collective parameter

Far from being an individual responsibility or burden, this is a collective issue to be tackled by everyone, including those who have been on this path for longer. Research is a constant struggle.

On this journey, I consider it important to team up with people who can support us, who are willing to share their knowledge, truly exchange with us, listen to us, and respect us.

This support is crucial, as is knowing how to ask for help, being resilient, and not comparing yourself to anyone else.

At most, compare yourself to previous versions of yourself, but never to other people.

When dealing with such challenges gets tough, stop and remind yourself of how far you have come, of what you have already accomplished. Everyone has their own path, their own story. Value yours and use that ability to your advantage.

The digital complex in which we now live, and which I call the “algoritmosfera” (algorithmosphere)—the title of my 2024 book—encourages comparisons with other people’s lives, but remember: these are harmful and paralyzing.

In an age when we talk so much about the powers of artificial intelligence, you have to love research work and believe in the importance of human knowledge and human interactions.

I believe the biggest challenge remains to have a genuine desire to research, to learn, to really chase knowledge, to read, to delve deeper, and to be willing to transform your way of understanding and seeing the world.

Camila De Paoli Leporace is a journalist with a master’s degree and PhD in education and a researcher in artificial intelligence (AI) from the perspective of human cognition. Her postdoctorate at the Institute of Computing of the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) is focused on education and science communication. She is a research fellow at Columbia University’s Transformative Learning Technologies Lab (TLTL) in Brazil, investigating teaching skills and their intersection with AI. She is also the author of Algoritmosfera – A cognição humana e a inteligência artificial (Algorithmosphere: Human cognition and artificial intelligence) (PUC-Rio and Hucitec, 2024).

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