Computational Social Philosophy Seminars (CSPS) is a regular international online seminar series, focusing on research that uses or engages with the use of computational tools to address questions in social philosophy.
All seminars are on Mondays at 8:30am PT / 11:30am ET / 4:30pm London / 5:30pm Berlin.
Date: September 21, 2026
Speaker: Sahar Heydari-Fard
Title: AI and Scientific Progress
Abstract: How will AI affect science’s capacity for paradigm shifts? Using a variation of Zollman and Heydari Fard’s model of scientific communication, I show that AI can reshape scientific networks in ways that accelerate convergence and make alternative approaches harder to sustain. This can improve efficiency while undermining the conditions for transformative scientific change. I then examine several ways to mitigate this risk, including interventions in network structure, AI design, and scientific institutions. The broader lesson is that AI’s effect on scientific progress depends not only on what AI can do, but on how it reorganizes the social structure of inquiry.
For a complete list of past and upcoming seminar presentations see the Talks page.
The seminars are held on Zoom and last 60 minutes. Our seminars will typically have one of the following formats
Format 1: 30 min presentation + 30 min discussion
Format 2: two flash talks, 15 min presentation + 15 min discussion each
Sina Fazelpour (Northeastern), Sahar Heydari Fard (Ohio State University), Hannah Rubin (University of Missouri), Dunja Šešelja (Ruhr-Universität Bochum), Rory Smead (Northeastern), Jingyi Wu (London School of Economics)
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