CAS Academician E Weinan: AI Will Drive "Democratization of Scientific Research," Citizen Scientists Will Be the Main Force of Future Research

On October 17, citing Phoenix Technology, E Weinan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Chair Professor at Peking University, said at the Guanghua Thought Leadership Forum that artificial intelligence is essentially "mathematics + computer engineering," which will significantly 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 "citizen scientists will be the main force of future research." He believes that the root cause of involution among enterprises is insufficient innovation capability. Although high-end industrial software and CNC machine tool systems are constrained by others, it is possible to build an AI-native industrial software system and, within one to two years, create a system that benchmarks against or even surpasses Siemens. He distinguished AI for Science from AI for Industry and judged that industrial production line modeling can be achieved within three to five years. He also warned that the current scientific research system will face enormous challenges and predicted that the form of research output will shift from papers to intellectual property.