AI Boosts Research Careers But Flattens Scientific Discovery (ieee.org) 64
Ancient Slashdot reader erice shares the findings from a recent study showing that while AI helped researchers publish more often and boosted their careers, the resulting papers were, on average, less useful. "You have this conflict between individual incentives and science as a whole," says James Evans, a sociologist at the University of Chicago who led the study. From a recent IEEE Spectrum article: To quantify the effect, Evans and collaborators from the Beijing National Research Center for Information Science and Technology trained a natural language processing model to identify AI-augmented research across six natural science disciplines. Their dataset included 41.3 million English-language papers published between 1980 and 2025 in biology, chemistry, physics, medicine, materials science, and geology. They excluded fields such as computer science and mathematics that focus on developing AI methods themselves. The researchers traced the careers of individual scientists, examined how their papers accumulated attention, and zoomed out to consider how entire fields clustered or dispersed intellectually over time. They compared roughly 311,000 papers that incorporated AI in some way -- through the use of neural networks or large language models, for example -- with millions of others that did not.
The results revealed a striking trade-off. Scientists who adopt AI gain productivity and visibility: On average, they publish three times as many papers, receive nearly five times as many citations, and become team leaders a year or two earlier than those who do not. But when those papers are mapped in a high-dimensional "knowledge space," AI-heavy research occupies a smaller intellectual footprint, clusters more tightly around popular, data-rich problems, and generates weaker networks of follow-on engagement between studies. The pattern held across decades of AI development, spanning early machine learning, the rise of deep learning, and the current wave of generative AI. "If anything," Evans notes, "it's intensifying." [...] Aside from recent publishing distortions, Evans's analysis suggests that AI is largely automating the most tractable parts of science rather than expanding its frontiers.
The results revealed a striking trade-off. Scientists who adopt AI gain productivity and visibility: On average, they publish three times as many papers, receive nearly five times as many citations, and become team leaders a year or two earlier than those who do not. But when those papers are mapped in a high-dimensional "knowledge space," AI-heavy research occupies a smaller intellectual footprint, clusters more tightly around popular, data-rich problems, and generates weaker networks of follow-on engagement between studies. The pattern held across decades of AI development, spanning early machine learning, the rise of deep learning, and the current wave of generative AI. "If anything," Evans notes, "it's intensifying." [...] Aside from recent publishing distortions, Evans's analysis suggests that AI is largely automating the most tractable parts of science rather than expanding its frontiers.
In other news (Score:1)
Obvious why, if you read the slop (Score:5, Interesting)
Basically, people sift through data trying to find "relationships" without giving too much construction on the actual knowledge behind these.
So, a lot of "discoveries" of correlations, not a lot of effort to explain the causative links.
At least in the fields I try to follow.
Sad, really, but enhanced by the publish-or-perish crap.
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Not "construction", auto-carrot, "consideration to". Or something similar.
Especially true for the younger researchers, who are very much stuck on "AI", but not limited to them.
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Sad, really, but enhanced by the publish-or-perish crap.
probably the other way around, llms enhance publish-or-perish frenzy, and the study is talking particularly about papers, which already was a swamp even before ai. i guess there are many other applications where generators and deep learning shine and may be actually very useful: imaging and diagnosis, discovery of molecular structures, antibiotics, protein folding, genomics, ...
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It's most likely circular. Publish or perish means more publishing means more AI means more papers published in total means you have to publish still more papers in order to look important means more AI
welcome to the corruption of science (Score:1)
classism and greed are destroying our institutions and our societies, all you selfish irresponsible elites are wrecking everything for everybody
this is exactly what evil looks like
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I spent my life in academia sir
it appears to me that you're just in denial about how deep corruption is in our institutions; patronism, cronyism and nepotism are obviously the main factors affecting financial and institutional 'success'
it's not what one does, it's who one knows
if hoarding wealth and power are success, then sure, the entitled upper class is successful
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When you can't dispute the claim, you attack the credibility of those making it
Everyone can see how corrupt, institutionalized and self serving academia and science have become and how most our 'schools' are just there so the teachers and the staff can earn comfortable upper middle class salaries. Clearly the road to success is in having the right connections. It's not just academia of course, classism has corrupted and perverted our entire society and only the overly affluent deny how unethical and unfair
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you just resent that some people are more enlightened and intelligent than you and we know when people are unethical and we call it out
of course, unethical people resent being exposed for the frauds they are, clearly all these upper class freeloaders are heading straight for hell, sadly they're wrecking everything for everybody as they go. it's easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the gates of heaven
all thanks to selfish and irresponsible fascist fundamentali
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sadly the decline of civilization is no joking matter, billions will suffer and die because of the unethical behavior of the greedy, the selfish and the irresponsible
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er ... one civilization. there is no the civilization. some burn out, others thrive and life finds a way. until a global extinction event "happens", that is.
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er ... one civilization. there is no the civilization. some burn out, others thrive and life finds a way. until a global extinction event "happens", that is.
Semantics, obviously, one need only look around at all the corruption, growing economic disparity and societal decay to clearly see the direction we collectively are heading in
the age of extinction is one term being mention by academics, another term is environmental collapse, and the rise of corporatocracy and plutocracy, etc.
people get the governments we deserve, unethical people get unethical governments
seems pretty straightforward to me
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Semantics,
indeed. one may consider the whole of humanity as a civilization facing global challenges like environmental degradation, or draw boundaries on various aspects facing more localized challenges. within some of these boundaries the temptation might arise to consider itself the one and only, the natural, the true and even the one blessed with the sacred mission to shape and save the entire world. "we" in the west have long succumbed to such temptation led by ambition and hubris and adorned our crusade with id
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ethics are inherent to both intelligence and development
what we have here is degradation and corruption
all the rhetoric in the world won't excuse all the evil and the greed that's wrecking everything for everybody
this current situation is exactly what evil looks like, it's obvious that rich and powerful unethical people are wrecking everything for everybody, this is what crime is
while it's true history carries on, at what cost? why should we allow evil to overcome all the good we have done
shame on us all, w
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i hear you. but this has been brewing for a long time and it's going to get worse before it gets better. quote that comes to mind: "the old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters".
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sadly everyone is going to pay dearly for the unethical actions of the upper class
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we should clean up our own mess before being distracted by the messes of others, let the Russians deal with Russia, that's called self-determination
typical red baiting, just saying
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Sorry but I disagree, ethics are inherent to life itself, even lower animals know how to show care and affection
typical egocentrism and a lack of understanding of how fundamental ethics are to quality of life, try reading some Pirsig as in Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle maintenance for an explanation of this. Civilizations thrive and grow because they are ethical and effective, once corruption sets in, civilizations rot from the top down.
These upper class people are addicted to power and they are pathologica
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Sorry but I disagree, ethics are inherent to life itself
i think we do agree except on the definition of what ethics is (semantics again). empathy, collaboration, respect, etc are indeed inherent in nature but that's not an ethical framework. ethics is the search and definition of a rational framework of what good behavior should be. that's definitely a human construct and other animals don't have that, or nowhere near that sophisticated. they have natural hierarchies and rules, they can have theory of mind, but their behavior emerged organically and they don't r
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Your reply rests on several debatable premises that don’t actually hold once ethics is examined more carefully.
First, it draws too sharp a line between ethical behavior and ethical reasoning. While it’s true that non-human animals do not construct formal, discursive moral theories, that does not mean ethics itself is purely a human invention. Many core ethical capacities—empathy, fairness, reciprocity, norm enforcement, and punishment of defectors—are well documented in social animal
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your effort in illustrating how ethics is a human construct is commendable. so not "inherent to life itself", but "formal, discursive moral theories".
you seem to think that some of them are "can be more justified than others", and thus somehow become "moral law", and i'm fine with that (and i surely could agree with many) as long as that only applies to yourself, but you seem oblivious of the fact that moral relativism is actually how humans work.
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Your need to be insulting and abusive undercuts your attempt to argue, it looks if you can't win an argument, you resort to trolling. Let's discuss your response in order to illustrate this.
First, acknowledging that ethics is not merely “formal, discursive moral theories” but something deeper already undermines the claim that ethics is *only* a human construct. If ethical capacities predate theory, then moral reasoning is not inventing ethics from nothing; it is attempting to *discover, refine,
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wow, we went into internet psychology! ok, then let's unpack this:
Your need to be insulting and abusive undercuts your attempt to argue, it looks if you can't win an argument, you resort to trolling.
you were first with ad-hominem ("i sank that low"; appealing to goowdwin, really?) to proclaim victory ("i lost the argument"; btw, who wants victory here and what does it even mean?) while you still didn't substantiate your statement that "ethics is inherent to life", which i disagreed with. and i'm fine to disagree and respect your position but find it comical that me merely pointing out that not only didn't you substantiate it but actually
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I think a lot of this rests on misunderstandings of both intent and position, so let me clarify rather than trade accusations.
First, there was no ad hominem intended, nor any attempt to “proclaim victory.” Acknowledging that a discussion has gone off the rails is not an appeal to triumph, and pointing that out is not abuse. I’m perfectly comfortable with disagreement, including sustained disagreement, without needing a winner.
Second, the claim that ethics may be inherent to life was never
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I think a lot of this rests on misunderstandings of both intent and position, so let me clarify rather than trade accusations.
First, there was no ad hominem intended, nor any attempt to “proclaim victory.” Acknowledging that a discussion has gone off the rails is not an appeal to triumph, and pointing that out is not abuse. I’m perfectly comfortable with disagreement, including sustained disagreement, without needing a winner.
Second, the claim that ethics may be inherent to life was never
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what bs, yes, we do, and worse, look at all the homeless and hungry while the upper class fascists live it up, greed is evil, all you classist people are going to burn in hell for how you cheated abused and stole from the rest of us
rich greedy unethical and powerful people are wrecking everything for everybody
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it's called classism, you're just blaming the other side while you whitewash upper class exploitation
rich people pretend they're ok, but obviously they are all unethical and abusive
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Define "woke".
Tell us which part of DEI you hate: Is it the diversity, equity, or inclusion?
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classism and greed are destroying our institutions and our societies, all you selfish irresponsible elites are wrecking everything for everybody
this is exactly what evil looks like
Evil and stupidity enhanced with shortsightedness look like twins. I suppose greed plays a role as well, but I feel like the root of what we're seeing sweep over the world right now is stupidity and shortsightedness. Greed is always there. We're just dumb enough as a species at this point in time to let the greedy make all the decisions about the important things, and the rest of us just shrug and go along with it as if there's nothing to be done to stop the greedy from riding roughshod over us, the biosphe
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with great power comes great responsibility
when those with power, and hoarding all our capital, act completely irresponsible, then a collapse is certain
history has shown us this is inevitable and natural, all systems emerge, grow, decay and then die
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classism produces corruption which breeds incompetency, greed is clearly evil, yet we put greedy people on a pedestal
we are all getting what we deserve for letting evil people rule over us
people get the governments we deserve and we don't deserve good things because we are an irresponsible and unethical peoples
look around with honest eyes and tell me it isn't so
The Big Expectations (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with scientists' careers is the expectations to make great discoveries. Science doesn't work like that. You may spend 20 years running experiments and crunching numbers and make a handful of mediocre observations at best. Then, one day, if you're extremely lucky and all the stars align, you may discover something more valuable when sitting on the sofa in the evening doing nothing. Still no guarantees that it's going to be anything big. Maybe 3 out of 10. Perhaps 4.
Meanwhile, all the young people want to be superstars from day 1 these days. And, of course, AI only enables to spin more bullshit to big themselves up instead of accepting that their career may ultimately amount to nothing at all.
I think that's only the public at Large (Score:2)
By the time a young pers
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Those days are gone and we need to move on. Science without ethics is how we got into this mess and all the unethical overly-affluent 'scientists' are never going to solve our problems. One of which is how corrupt science and academia have become. Sadly, there no room for real science when science is only about making the big bucks and having a prestigious position, clearly what we call science has become corrupted and moribund.
I am skeptical (Score:1)
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no surprise with the current AI (Score:2)
I'll assume the "current AI" is LLM based. Why would anyone expect it to make new discoveries of intellectual depth. All its doing is rearranging the deck chairs, there's nothing deep about that. It can do it faster than humans, I suppose there's that.
As someone above noted, most scientists are in trenches mining salt (my paraphrase). To put it in a different light, most science is pushing current theories a bit farther, or figuring out new consequences of current theories; they are not discovering new theo
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Honestly, what i see is most science is someone doing make work and publishing bs so they can keep their grant and their title. As long as they are tenured and publish, they can enjoy a prestigious free ride, that is what science is about these days.
senior scientist apples vs early career pears (Score:1)
This is my opinion: once you are some sort of senior researcher who leads a very big consortium that produces lots of data, you use AI to process all that data and that very big s
Surprise! (Score:2)
AI cannot discover or innovate, because AI is only capable of looking at pre-existing patterns and the preponderance of pre-existing patterns will always be where people have already done all the real work.
It is my conjecture that specialists using AI will continue becoming worse and worse at their subjects because that is NOT what AI is actually good at.
This is not to say I think AI is useless (although it largely is). I would argue that AI can be used by generalists to find interesting patterns between we
Modern Story of Science (Score:2)
General Pattern (Score:2)
AI helped researchers publish more often (Score:2)
This is the problem
Science, as a concept, is great
As a business, measured by the number of papers published, it sucks
Instead of rewarding people based on the number of papers published, they should be rewarded by the quality of papers published, even if there are very few
Thing that can only regurgitate what it knows (Score:2)
Thing that can only regurgitate what it knows can't actually discover anything. Big shock. But I guess it does work well for another shitty agenda-driven meta-analysis.