Suzi Wilson examines how AI is shifting from an auxiliary tool to core scientific infrastructure, enabling smaller teams to handle tasks like literature review and experimental design that once required large interdisciplinary groups. She argues that whether AI produces a scientific renaissance or a homogenized ‘monoculture’ depends less on model capability than on whether researchers, reviewers and funders reward originality over speed. The piece warns that AI-driven convergence in research topics and methods could flatten scientific pluralism.
