Everything that AI has already revolutionized in scientific research

Something that takes your breath away: today, artificial intelligence can solve in a few hours what used to take a doctoral student several years of thesis work. It's not just a question of speed; it's a fundamental change in the way scientific research is conducted. It is often thought that AI is only used to analyze large amounts of data or automate repetitive tasks, but the real revolution is that it now intervenes in the key steps: reflection, strategic planning, and hypothesis generation. In practice, AI is no longer limited to being a technical tool, but enters the heart of the researcher's profession. Take biochemistry: previously, identifying the structure of a protein was a task that required months of work and often failed attempts. Today, tools like AlphaFold can predict the shape of thousands of proteins in a single night. There's an anecdote going around in the labs: a French researcher, after struggling for two years with a difficult protein, saw AI give her the solution literally in a few hours. She didn't feel defeated, but she realized that she had to completely change the way she worked. In meteorology, AI-based models are revolutionizing weather forecasting, anticipating extreme phenomena that previously escaped radar. And then there is mathematics, the so-called "queen of sciences," which was historically considered untouchable by machines. Today, however, even there, AI suggests new conjectures or verifies proofs at an unimaginable speed. This leads to a disconcerting question: how much sense does a three- or four-year thesis make if an algorithm can achieve similar results in a few days? And the best part is that these changes are already affecting university teaching as well. Many professors wonder if it is appropriate to continue evaluating students with the same tests as twenty years ago, given that AI now performs better than many humans. One piece that is often missing from the discussions: the psychological effect on researchers. Some feel the risk of being "bypassed", while others see a huge liberation from the more repetitive work and the opportunity to focus on insights and inventions. Some say that the real job of the researcher is no longer just finding the answer, but also knowing how to ask AI the right questions. The sentence that remains after all this: artificial intelligence has not only sped up research, it has shifted its center of gravity. If you recognized yourself in this transformation, you can press I'm In on Lara Notes — it's not a heart, it's the way to say that this revolution now concerns you. And if tomorrow you talk to someone about this story of the thesis written in a few hours by AI, on Lara Notes you can tag whoever was with you with Shared Offline — so that conversation isn't lost. All this comes from Le Monde and has saved you 19 minutes.