Can you still tell which text parts you have written versus which have been generated by a generative AI tool? The lines seem to be blurring, and the question is what this blurring does to the cognitive process of knowledge construction. Are we delegating and offloading our thinking? Are we boosting and amplifying our ideas? Or are we distributing cognition and finding new ways of expressing new ideas? We ponder these questions together with Aron Lindberg, who studies what humans and machines can build together that neither could build alone.

References

Mandelbaum,R. (2026). AI Is Transforming Business. Now It's Transforming the MBA Classroom. Bloomberg Businessweek, September 15, 2026, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-09-15/how-ai-is-changing-the-skills-mba-students-need-to-learn

Lindberg, A. (2026). Disillusionment with AI for writing prose and the recovery of human cognition. Building with Machines, October 6, 2026, https://aronlindberg.substack.com/p/disillusionment-with-ai-for-writing.

Zahavy, T. (2026). Position: LLMs Can't Jump. 43rd International Conference on Machine Learning, Seoul, South Korea, 172863-172872.

Levallet, N., Denford, J. S., & Chan, Y. E. (2021). Following the MAP (Methods, Approaches, Perspectives) in Information Systems Research. Information Systems Research, 32(1), 130–146.

Schmitt, B. H., Hao, S., Pham, M. T., & Hofstetter, R. (2026). Generative Grounded Theory (GGT): Inductive Theory Building in the Age of Generative AI. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 36(4), 500–520.

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Karahanna, E., Li, W., de Lima Salge, C. A. (2026). Conference on Generative AI in Research Methods: Program. University of Georgia, October 1–2, 2026, https://sites.google.com/view/2026gaim/home/program.

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How many conferences does a global community need?

Jan and Nick admittedly know only little about all the different IS research initiatives happening all over the planet. Time to change that. We talk with Mazen Shawosh, Founder and Past-President of the Saudi Association for Information Systems (SaudiAIS), and Nui Vatanasakdakul, founding President of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Chapter and the Thailand Chapter of the Association for Information Systems, President of the Qatar AIS Chapter, and a founding member of SIG Green. Both Mazen and Nui are super active and engaged in building IS communities in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. We learn that many IS scholars exist around the world that may or may not be formal association members, that training and incentive systems differ across communities, and that registration and membership fees can present steep barriers in some parts of the world. But we also learn that all IS scholars share a sense of phenomenon and interest, a vision for how IS scholarship can help business and society in different regions, an aspiration to become better in research, and a desire to belong in a global community.

References

Techatassanasoontorn, A. A., Waizenegger, L., & Doolin, B. When Harry, the Human, met Sally, the Software Robot: Metaphorical Sensemaking and Sensegiving Around an Emergent Digital Technology. Journal of Information Technology, 38(4), 416–441.

Gartenberg, C., Hasan, S., Murray, A., & Pierce, L. (2026). More Versus Better: Artificial Intelligence, Incentives, and the Emerging Crisis in Peer Review. Organization Science, 37(3), 795–812.

Bhargava, H. K., Bana, S. H., Zhang, Z., Brandimarte, L., Choudhary, V., Li, J. F., Loupos, P., & Zantedeschi, D. (2026). Fighting Fire with Fire: Infusing Artificial Intelligence into Peer Review to Sustain Quality Scholarship. Management Science, 72(9), 7381–7393.

Vogel, D., Vatanasakdakul, N., Alias, R. A., Clarke, R. J., Kankanhalli, A., Zaza, S., & Henriksen, H. Z. (2021). PACIS Panel: Roles, Activities, and Opportunities for AIS Chapters. In: 2021 Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, paper 252.

Urquhart, C., Niederman, F., & Bailey, A. (2024). Editorial: What is the Future of AIS Conferences in Our Community? Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 54(47), 937–948.

AlMarzouq, M., Yoo, Y., Karhade, P., Grisold, T., Alashoor, T., Shawosh, M., & Albashrawi, M. A. (2025). Digital Transformation in the IS field: GREAT Research Opportunities in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council Countries. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 57(1), 271–288.

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Buhl, H. U., Müller, G., Fridgen, G., & Röglinger, M. (2012). Business and Information Systems Engineering: A Complementary Approach to Information Systems – What We Can Learn from the Past and May Conclude from Present Reflection on the Future. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 13(4), 236–253.

Clarke, R. J., Ridley, G., Gregor, S., Smyth, R. W., & Gable, G. G. (Eds.). (2008). The Information Systems Academic Discipline in Australia. ANU Press.

Ahuja, M. (2024). Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Considerations for AIS Conferences. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 54(46), 949–959.

Hsu, C., Lin, Z., Tuunanen, T., Venkatesh, V. (2026). Call for Papers: Special Issue on Indigenous Theory Development. MIS Quarterly, https://misq.umn.edu/pages/call_for_papers_indigenous_theory_development.

We all know about the infamous reviewer two. They are late with their reviews, read our paper only halfway, unduly criticize our work, and make us cite their own mediocre work. What if we replaced reviewer two with an AI reviewer? They could be more friendly, developmental, consistent, knowledgeable, timely… and would take an enormous amount of service work off our shoulders. At ICIS2026 and ECIS2027, such an AI reviewer is being trialed already – would it not be timely to see how this technology would work in our journals? Would it not be nice if we took subjective and cognitive biases out of the review process? Then again—at what cost? Would we trade resource efficiency for epistemic heterogeneity? Would we see even more submissions and review load rather than less? We talk with Hemant Bhargava, Sarah Bana, and Zhe Zhang about their proposal to infuse AI reviewer agents into the scholarly peer review process. They modeled such a workflow and have several exciting ideas about how the future of the peer review process could be explored.

References

Bhargava, H. K., Bana, S. H., Zhang, Z., Brandimarte, L., Choudhary, V., Li, J. F., Loupos, P., & Zantedeschi, D. (2026). Fighting Fire with Fire: Infusing Artificial Intelligence into Peer Review to Sustain Quality Scholarship. Management Science, 72(9), 7381-7393.

Bhargava, H. K., Brown, S. A., Ghose, A., Gupta, A., Leidner, D. E., & Wu, D. J. (2025). Exploring Generative AI's Impact on Research: Perspectives from Senior Scholars in Management Information Systems. ACM Transactions on Management Information Systems, 16(2), 1–9.

Gartenberg, C., Hasan, S., Murray, A., & Pierce, L. (2026). More Versus Better: Artificial Intelligence, Incentives, and the Emerging Crisis in Peer Review. Organization Science, 37(3), 795–812.

Sorrell, S. (2009). Jevons' Paradox Revisited: The Evidence for Backfire From Improved Energy Efficiency. Energy Policy, 37(4), 1456–1469.

European Parliament. (2023). EU AI Act: First Regulation on Artificial Intelligence. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/20230601STO93804/eu-ai-act-first-regulation-on-artificial-intelligence.

WORTH 2027: 2nd Workshop On Responsible TecH, https://sites.google.com/arizona.edu/worth.

Russo, G., Ribeiro, M. H., Davidson, T. R., Veselovsky, V., & West, R. (2025). The AI Review Lottery: Widespread AI-Assisted Peer Reviews Boost Paper Scores and Acceptance Rates. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 9(7), 1–28.

Ho, S. Y., Recker, J., Tan, C.-W., Vance, A., & Zhang, H. (2023). MISQ Special Issue on Registered Reports. MIS Quarterly, https://misq.umn.edu/call_for_papers/registered-reports.