Check out our write-up of the exciting and interesting ‘Publishing Waste and Circularity Science in the Age of AI’ panel from day 2 of the ISWA World Congress 2026.
AI is the defining technological innovation of our age. It’s impact will ripple out across every industry and wider society. Nowhere is this impact being felt more acutely than in the world of academia, which is on the frontline of how to respond to AI.
Introducing a fascinating discussion on ‘Publishing Waste and Circularity Science in the Age of AI’, Dr Costas Velis explained how AI is disrupting scientific research and policy.
He explained that AI, specifically Large Language Models (LLMs) like Claude and ChatGPT, are changing how everyone perceives information and is eroding trust with the scientific community.
Prof Mario Grosso, Politechnico di Milano, warned about the LLMs sycophancy and its tendency to agree with the human it’s ‘interacting’ with.
Opening the discussion up to the panel, Velis asked how can we assess the accuracy and wider truthfulness of the ‘scientific info’, and what tools do we have to do this?
CIWM’s Dan Cooke explained that he believes we’re living in a post-truth world where facts are less important than appeals to emotion. How we consume information has also changed, we’ve become used to short snippets and impatient for an immediate truth.
“AI is creating a fog that is concealing the truth,” Cooke told delegates.
Circular Economy expert and host of ISWA 2026 Mark Shayler shared his concerns that AI was making him lazy. He warned that the tendency to work less hard and use AI for research is massive.
Using AI as indexing system is one thing, Shayer cautioned, but as a research or opinion system is another thing all together.
“We have knowledge and tools to interrogate information,” Shayler said. “We’re the problem, we’ve become idle and lazier as the tools are so powerful, but the power comes with responsibility.”
There is a tendency, because of the power of AI, to view it as a potential solution for every single problem.
However, Maya Zaatar, Royal Borough of Greenwich, who has worked as practitioner in over 25 countries in global south, highlighted that in her experience waste is the same everywhere, the systems that manage waste are what differ from country to country.
She explained that for countries at the beginning of their waste infrastructure development, measurement is not the most important factor. Instead, the focus has to be on delivering basic, simple, low-cost tools to manage waste, not on integrating AI technologies.
Local contexts are what should inform decisions, papers are not always relevant, Zaatar emphasised.
Often these local contexts demonstrate that circularity isn’t a theoretical concept, it is an on-the-ground reality in many countries in the Global South.
Zaatar went on to say that circularity shouldn’t be put into one big basket, it looks different in different geographies, and this diversity should be embraced.
The panel concluded with a discussion of next steps, where do we go from here as we brace for the long-term impact of AI?
CIWM’s Dan Cooke explained that the answer is within ourselves as we know how to verify sources and can then use them as a trustworthy guide through the fog of new information.
Mark Shayler advocated for a strategy of slowing down. There is a benefit in slowing down and asking better questions, he argued.
Shayler argued we should establish the answers to who is responsible for highlighting papers and information. A transparent, reliable source of truth, would be a first step towards a solution to the problems of publishing in an age of AI.