AI research tools benefit individual scientists but may slow scientific progress

An analysis of over 41 million research papers from the past 40 years has revealed that researchers who use artificial intelligence (AI) tools in their work publish more papers and receive more citations. However, using these tools may narrow academics research to those areas that are richest in data.

AI tools can help scientists identify patterns in large datasets, automate certain processes for high-throughput experiments or help with scientific writing. A team led by James Evans  at the University of Chicago in the US, along with researchers in China, has now sought to better understand how adopting such tools affects both individual scientists and the wider scientific community.