AI in Science: Reclaiming Discovery
The goal of AI in science isn’t to make researchers lazy—it’s to liberate them from the tyranny of the trivial. By automating the mechanical, we reclaim space for the magical: curiosity, insight, and discovery. As one computational biologist put it: “Let the machine count the trees. We’ll map the forest.” 1. Definition & Scope Core Idea : The phrase “we don’t need to be right to write” challenges the traditional view that scientific writing must emerge fully formed from deep, error-free reasoning. Instead, it reframes writing as a generative, iterative, and exploratory tool —one that can be delegated, scaffolded, or accelerated by artificial intelligence (AI), particularly large language models (LLMs), to free human researchers for higher-order cognitive work. Key Terms : “Donkey-work” : Repetitive, time-consuming, low-cognitive-load tasks (e.g., formatting references, drafting boilerplate text, transcribing notes, organizing datasets). Large Language Models (LLMs) : AI systems (e...