Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, E Weinan: AI will promote the "democratization of scientific research," and in the future, citizen scientists will be the main force in research.

PANews, October 17 news: According to Phoenix Technology, Shi Weinan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a chair professor at Peking University, said at the Guanghua Thought Leadership Forum that the essence of artificial intelligence is "mathematics + computer engineering," which will greatly lower the threshold for scientific research and promote the "democratization of scientific research." Through open laboratories and cloud services, every team and individual with ideas and capabilities can participate in technological innovation, and "in the future, citizen scientists will be the main force in scientific research." He believes that the fundamental reason for involution within enterprises is insufficient innovation capacity. Although high-end industrial software and machine tool CNC systems are constrained by others, an AI-native industrial software system can be built, and a system benchmarked against or even surpassing Siemens can be developed within one to two years. He distinguishes AI for Science from AI for Industry and judges that modeling of industrial production lines can be achieved in three to five years. He also warns that the current scientific research system will face enormous challenges and predicts that the form of scientific research outputs will shift from papers to intellectual property.