ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD: HOW TO COPE WITH A COMPLETE OXYMORON.

Artificial intelligence can be a powerful tool for data analysis, but it can also mislead investigators due in part to a fundamental difference between classic data analysis and data analysis using AI. A more or less limited data set is analyzed in classic data analysis, and a hypothesis is generated. That hypothesis is then tested using a separate data set, and the data are examined again. The premise was either accepted or rejected with a value "p," indicating that any difference observed was due merely to chance. In contrast, a new hypothesis is generated in artificial intelligence as each datum is added to the data set. We explore this discrepancy and suggest means to overcome it.