Ethan Mollick: AI's twin revolutions in science—re-reading all literature and accelerating discovery
emollick · x · 2026-10-07
Ethan Mollick argues OpenAI made progress on hundreds of major scientific problems in a single day, and reports seeing AI produce near-autonomous research reaching top-journal level in his own field of economic sociology.
He predicts two coming revolutions from AI:
- Re-reading the old: everything ever published will be re-read and re-judged in ways human scientists never anticipated
- Accelerating the new: novel discoveries will start arriving fast
He frames the current "slop science era" as a brief, institution-eroding phase before this transformation.
Related event: Ethan Mollick: AI Will Spark a Dual Scientific Revolution(2 posts)→
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