CAS Member E Weinan Predicts AI Will Democratize Scientific Research

Chinese Academy of Sciences member E Weinan stated at a forum that artificial intelligence will lower the threshold for scientific research and democratize innovation, enabling independent researchers and small teams to participate through cloud services and open labs. This shift could fundamentally reshape traditional academic and industrial software systems, allowing countries or independent teams to bypass legacy bottlenecks and achieve 'lane-changing overtaking' in high-end industries within a few years. E Weinan emphasized that AI-native industrial software systems could potentially surpass Siemens within one to two years, while warning that current academic systems face immense challenges from a surge in paper submissions and a lack of true exploratory freedom.