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AI tools boost individual scientists but could limit research as a whole

Analyses of hundreds of thousands of papers in the natural sciences reveal a paradox: scientists who use AI tools produce more research but on a more confined set of topics.
By
  1. Veda C. Storey

    1. Veda C. Storey is at the J. Mack Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University, Atlanta, Georgia 30302, USA.

Artificial intelligence is influencing many aspects of society, including science. Writing in Nature, Hao et al.1 report a paradox: the adoption of AI tools in the natural sciences expands scientists’ impact but narrows the set of domains that research is carried out in. The authors examined more than 41 million papers, roughly 311,000 of which had been augmented by AI in some way — through the use of machine-learning methods or generative AI, for example. They find that scientists who conduct AI-augmented research publish more papers, are cited more often and progress faster in their careers than those who do not, but that AI automates established fields rather than supporting the exploration of new ones. This raises questions and concerns regarding the potential impact of AI tools on scientists and on science as a whole.

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Nature 649, 1111-1112 (2026)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-04092-3

References

  1. Hao, Q., Xu, F., Li, Y. & Evans, J. Nature 649, 1237–1243 (2025).

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  2. Russell, S. J. & Norvig, P. Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach 4th edn (Pearson Educ., 2021).

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  3. Milojević, S. Nature 642, 870–871 (2025).

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  5. Guizzardi, G., Pastor, O. & Storey, V. C. IEEE Softw. 40, 139–142 (2023).

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Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

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