It sounds promising: AI chatbots acting as scientists, condensing the work of weeks, months, or even years of reading, debate, and hour-long lab meetings into minutes. Researchers at Stanford University and Google DeepMind have released multi-agent AI “scientist” systems. But how good are they, really, and will they overcome current limitations of large language models like OpenAI’s GPT or Google’s Gemini—such as the lack of robust reasoning capabilities, which are crucial for scientific discovery? In the 38th episode of the BioRevolution Podcast, Andreas Horchler and Louise von Stechow discuss the promise and the reality of AI scientists. Learn more about the future of biotech in our podcasts and keynotes. Contact us here: scientific communication: https://science-tales.com/ Podcasts: https://www.podcon.de/ Keynotes: https://www.zukunftsinstitut.de/louise-von-stechow

Image: Igor Saikin via Unsplash

References AI scientists overview

1. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-02241-2
2. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.07.25331008v1
3. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-02028-5
4. https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.09403
5. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02218-z
6. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01364-w
7. https://valutric.com/googles-ai-co-scientist-vs-openais-deep-research-vs-perplexitys-deep-research/
8. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00343-5

AI scientists Sakana AI

9. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-02842-3
10. https://sakana.ai/ai-scientist-first-publication/
11. https://www.wired.com/story/ai-scientist-ubc-lab/ Google’s co-scientist
12. https://research .google/blog/accelerating-scientific-breakthroughs-with-an-ai-co-scientist/
13. https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.18864 DeepResearch
14. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01485-2
15. https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/evaluation-deep-research-performance
16. https://modernsciences.org/openai-deep-research-agent-ai-tool-limitations-february-2025/
17. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00377-9
18. https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.13740 Stanford
19. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01684-3

Self-driving labs

20. https://www.nature.com/articles/s44286-023-00002-4
21. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10700133/