Generative Artificial Intelligence and the Craft of Qualitative Health Research: Observations From a Techno-Negative Stance

Abstract

In this essay, I offer my take on contemporary matters relevant to the existing, emerging, and imagined intersections between qualitative health research (QHR) and generative artificial intelligence (GenAI). The essay’s central argument is that the increasing reliance on GenAI in QHR is eroding scholarly craftspersonship and should be challenged. In order to present and justify this argument, I posit five coordinated observations: The growing body of literature on using GenAI in qualitative research is reducing qualitative research to coding and pattern recognition; the turn to GenAI disincentivizes reading and stultifies qualitative health researchers; the infatuation with GenAI amplifies the process of McDonaldization of QHR; the time that GenAI saves us isn’t being used to become better researchers; and our tendency to humanize GenAI may dehumanise us, whereas craftspersonship is a state of being human. Grounding on such observations, I make a case for embedding a techno-negative stance called neo-luddism in the political culture of QHR. I suggest that this might be an urgent task, for the relation of cruel techno-optimism that some qualitative researchers have established with GenAI can rapidly lead to their own obsolescence. Needless to say, no GenAI has been purposely employed to craft this article.