Stanford's James Zou proposes the "paper agent": every paper as a living agent
james_y_zou · x · 2026-10-15
Stanford professor James Zou proposes replacing the PDF as the basic unit of scientific knowledge with a "paper agent." A PDF records results, but agents need to reconstruct how the work was done. Each paper would have an agent representing its claims, behaving like its author and knowing how to run its experiments; agents from different papers could interact to test whether methods combine into something new. The paper stays the scientific record while the agent holds the operational knowledge — reproduction through representation itself. The concept was recently covered by the NY Times.
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