18 May 2026
The backlash against artificial intelligence is growing. Nature wants to know what its readers think about the impact on science.
By
Mohana Basu
A backlash against artificial intelligence is growing. Credit: Liubomyr Vorona/iStock via Getty Artificial-intelligence tools are becoming more sophisticated and are now part of people’s everyday lives. But even as AI entrepreneurs encourage their use, a survey by US broadcaster NBC News in March showed that the majority of people in the United States thought that the risks of AI outweigh the benefits. Just 26% of participants said that they have positive feelings about AI, compared with 46% who had negative views.But what do researchers think?AI tools are increasingly central to scientific work, driving research advances. However, they also make it easy to create poor-quality and entirely fabricated research, polluting the scientific canon. Researchers have also raised concerns about the impact that the reliance on AI has on human cognition, the threat AI tools present to jobs and the effects of the high energy demands of AI on the climate.
