Posts from 2026-05
Automating science
The advent of AI agents based on large language models (LLMs) has put the idea of automating the intellectual and cognitive work of researchers on the table. A lively, sometimes even heated discussion is already going on. A frequently missing piece in this debate is the question why we, individually and as a society, actually do science. I will examine this question first, and then consider what it implies for introducing automation into science.
Tags: computational science, computer-aided research, digital scientific notations, emacs, mmtk, mobile computing, polycrisis, programming, proteins, python, rants, reproducible research, science, scientific computing, scientific software, social networks, software, source code repositories, sustainable software
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