New series from Quanta Magazine explores AI’s impact on science

The rise of artificial intelligence has sent a profound shockwave through science and mathematics. Though it started as a research tool, AI has become something more like a partner in creativity, a junior colleague, an impressive — if unreliable — wish-granting genie. It has changed everything from how researchers devise experiments to how mathematicians think about proofs.

In “Science, Promise and Peril in the Age of AI,” a new special series released today, Quanta Magazine looks far beyond AI-based research tools to explore how AI is changing what it means to do science and what it means to be a scientist.

The series, conceived by the magazine’s computer science desk and led by Executive Editor Michael Moyer, extends across three sections.

• “Input” explores the origins of AI and demystifies its workings.
• “Black Box” explains how neural networks function and why their operations can be difficult to interpret. It also chronicles ChatGPT’s disruption of natural language processing research in an extended oral history featuring 19 past and current researchers.
• “Output” ponders the implications of these technologies and how science and math may respond to their influence.

The series includes seven new pieces of original reporting, along with an interactive visual explainer, a video profile, a thought-provoking collection of predictions from leading researchers and a glossary of common terms related to artificial intelligence.

“Over the last few years, we’ve heard from so many scientists and mathematicians about how their fields are evolving in response to this technological landslide,” Moyer says. “We felt Quanta had a role to play in adding both context and humanity to an inescapable story.”

“Science, Promise and Peril in the Age of AI” continues a wave of ambitious work by Quanta. In September 2024, the magazine published “The Unraveling of Space-Time,” its first special series of this scale. That project recently received the National Magazine Award for Best Single-Topic Issue, and additional series are slated for later in the year.

“We hope that these ambitious projects reflect the depth and complexity of the world of basic science and math that we cover and that they will provide an enduring resource for curious readers around the world,” says Editor-in-Chief Samir Patel.

Readers of “Science, Promise and Peril in the Age of AI” will also have an opportunity to put their questions to Quanta’s reporters. John Pavlus, a contributor to the series, and Ben Brubaker, Quanta’s staff writer for computer science, will participate in a Reddit “ask me anything” session about the series from 2–4 p.m. ET on Tuesday, May 6, on the r/iAmA subreddit, a forum for community-driven Q&A discussions with subject experts.

Quanta Magazine is an award-winning, editorially independent online publication of the Simons Foundation.

Brubaker, Moyer and Patel are available for media interviews about the series and its contents.