MIT Technology Review AI reporting · 14h ago · 3/5
Artificial scientists ↗
AI companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind are building AI co-scientist systems designed to autonomously conduct research with minimal human guidance, building on successes like AlphaFold's Nobel Prize-winning protein structure prediction. Recent deployments include OpenAI's GPT-Rosalind specialized scientific models and systems that integrate with automated laboratories to propose and run experiments, achieving results like 40% cost reductions in protein synthesis. However, a Nature study warns that while individual scientists benefit professionally, AI adoption may reduce scientific diversity by concentrating research on established topics with large datasets, potentially leaving understudied problems neglected.
AI reduces the scope of what the scientific community investigates... scientists who use it gravitate toward established topic areas where large-scale data is available.
OpenAI had connected GPT-5 directly with automated biological laboratories so that the AI system could iteratively propose experiments and interpret the results with limited human involvement.