On 5 May, the Faculty of Croatian Studies at the University of Zagreb hosted a guest lecture by Prof. Dr. Christian Morgner from the University of Portsmouth, entitled “Generative AI as a Question Laboratory: From Answers to Questions”. The lecture was held for sociology students as part of the institutional research project DIGI-HR.

In his presentation, Prof. Morgner challenged the dominant understanding of artificial intelligence as a technology designed to generate answers, proposing a different approach: generative artificial intelligence as a tool for creating, comparing, and reformulating questions. The central thesis of the lecture was that questions are not neutral, but already contain theoretical assumptions about the world, responsibility, and social problems, and that inquiry does not begin with a question, but with a situation of indeterminacy that the question itself shapes and stabilises.

He particularly emphasised that standard research questions such as “What causes obesity?” or “What is the impact of artificial intelligence on education?” often predetermine how we understand a problem by directing research towards causes while neglecting the conditions that made it possible for a particular phenomenon to be recognised as a social problem in the first place. As an alternative, he proposed the analytical framework of asking “How is something possible?”, which shifts attention to the social, communicative, and institutional conditions that give rise to particular phenomena.

At the core of the lecture was the idea of a “sociology of questions” — an approach that investigates how certain questions become socially legitimate, research-relevant, and politically significant. Morgner demonstrated how every question simultaneously makes some aspects visible while excluding others, thereby shaping the boundaries of inquiry, the distribution of responsibility, and possible social interventions in advance.

Speaking about generative artificial intelligence, Prof. Morgner stressed that its most important sociological potential may not lie in generating answers, but in opening up new perspectives and creating alternative ways of asking questions. Through examples from health, alcohol consumption, and education, he showed how artificial intelligence can serve as a tool for comparing different theoretical approaches and uncovering hidden assumptions that structure social knowledge.

Christian Morgner concluded by emphasising that changing the question also changes the way we understand social reality, social actors, and possible futures, and that generative artificial intelligence can become an important research tool for developing a more reflexive and critical sociology of contemporary social change.

Prof. Morgner’s visit to the Faculty of Croatian Studies is part of a wider programme of guest lectures taking place this week במסגרת the DIGI-HR project. The next lecture will be held on Thursday, 7 May, by Prof. Barry J. Gibson from the University of Sheffield. In his lecture entitled “Time-Tripping from the Academy to the Icon: Negotiating Methodological Schisms and the Contested Legacy of Kurt Cobain”, Prof. Gibson will address questions of collective memory, social power, and cultural interpretations of the past, linking methodological debates on grounded theory with an analysis of the reputational legacy of Kurt Cobain and the broader social dynamics of shaping historical memory.