Artificial intelligence is transforming scientific discovery through (semi-)autonomous agents capable of reasoning, planning, and interacting with digital and physical environments. This Comment explores the foundations and frontiers of agentic science, outlining its emerging directions, current limitations, and the pathways for responsible integration into scientific practice.
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Acknowledgements
H.X. acknowledges funding support from the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences, Chemical Sciences, Geosciences, and Biosciences Division (DE-SC0023323).
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Nature Machine Intelligence thanks Edvin Fako, and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.
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Xin, H., Kitchin, J.R. & Kulik, H.J. Towards agentic science for advancing scientific discovery. Nat Mach Intell 7, 1373–1375 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-025-01110-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-025-01110-x
