How should LLMs affect the practice of science?

Large language models (LLMs) are being increasingly incorporated into scientific workflows. However, we have yet to fully grasp the implications of this integration. How should the advancement of large language models affect the practice of science? For this opinion piece, we have invited four diverse groups of scientists to reflect on this query, sharing their […]

Continue Reading

Scaling Laws of Scientific Discovery with AI and Robot Scientists

The rapid evolution of scientific inquiry highlights an urgent need for groundbreaking methodologies that transcend the limitations of traditional research. Conventional approaches, bogged down by manual processes and siloed expertise, struggle to keep pace with the demands of modern discovery. We envision an autonomous generalist scientist (AGS) system-a fusion of agentic AI and embodied robotics-that […]

Continue Reading

Chatbots for Data Collection in Surveys

Surveys are a widespread method for collecting data at scale, but their rigid structure often limits the depth of qualitative insights obtained. While interviews naturally yield richer responses, they are challenging to conduct across diverse locations and large participant pools. To partially bridge this gap, we investigate the potential of using LLM-based chatbots to support […]

Continue Reading

Evaluating AI Models as Scientific Research Assistants

Recent advancements have positioned AI, and particularly Large Language Models (LLMs), as transformative tools for scientific research, capable of addressing complex tasks that require reasoning, problem-solving, and decision-making. Their exceptional capabilities suggest their potential as scientific research assistants but also highlight the need for holistic, rigorous, and domain-specific evaluation to assess effectiveness in real-world scientific […]

Continue Reading

Towards an AI co-scientist

Scientific discovery relies on scientists generating novel hypotheses that undergo rigorous experimental validation. To augment this process, we introduce an AI co-scientist, a multi-agent system built on Gemini 2.0. The AI co-scientist is intended to help uncover new, original knowledge and to formulate demonstrably novel research hypotheses and proposals, building upon prior evidence and aligned […]

Continue Reading

Beyond Likert Scales: Convergent Validity of an NLP-Based Assessment from Verbal Data

Psychological assessment using self-report Likert items suffers from numerous inherent biases. These biases limit our capability to assess complex psychological constructs such as Future Self-Continuity (FSC), i.e. the perceived connection between one’s present and future self. However, recent advances in Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Large Language Models (LLMs) have opened new possibilities for psychological […]

Continue Reading

Agent Laboratory: Using LLM Agents as Research Assistants

Historically, scientific discovery has been a lengthy and costly process, demanding substantial time and resources from initial conception to final results. To accelerate scientific discovery, reduce research costs, and improve research quality, we introduce Agent Laboratory, an autonomous LLM-based framework capable of completing the entire research process. This framework accepts a human-provided research idea and […]

Continue Reading

Challenges in Guardrailing Large Language Models for Science

The rapid development in large language models (LLMs) has transformed the landscape of natural language processing and understanding (NLP/NLU), offering significant benefits across various domains. However, when applied to scientific research, these powerful models exhibit critical failure modes related to scientific integrity and trustworthiness. Existing general-purpose LLM guardrails are insufficient to address these unique challenges […]

Continue Reading