Public Lecture: Professor Sir Bashir M. Al-Hashimi CBE FRS FREng

Public Lecture: Professor Sir Bashir M. Al-Hashimi CBE FRS FREng, Vice President (Research and Innovation), King's College London

Rethinking Research: The Role of Humans in Scientific Discovery in the Age of LLMs*

Artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models (LLMs) are rapidly reshaping the landscape of scientific discovery. These technologies highlight the significant potential of AI to enhance human scientific capabilities and accelerate research. At the same time, they signal a profound shift in how research is conceived, conducted, and communicated, as well as how doctoral students and researchers are supervised and intellectually developed. This transformation calls for a critical re-examination of the human role in research.

The relationship between humans and AI, and their combined biological and artificial intelligence, must be grounded in mutual critique, trust, and collaboration. Researchers should rigorously evaluate AI-generated outputs using their own expertise and judgment, while also leveraging LLMs to test, challenge, and refine arguments and hypotheses through critical thinking. Such reciprocal co-creation ensures that AI functions as an augmentative partner rather than a replacement in the pursuit of scientific knowledge. It also points toward a shift from a traditional two-way relationship to a three-way partnership involving students, supervisors, and LLMs.

Rather than offering definitive conclusions, this talk seeks to stimulate dialogue, question assumptions, and inspire new forms of collective thinking about the future of scientific research and doctoral training in an AI-driven world.

*This presentation was prepared by human, augmented by LLMs