On Monday morning, the Nobel Prize for medicine was announced. This year, I wonder: Will Claude or a future artificial intelligence agent ever win the most prestigious award for medical discovery?
Imagine a future AI agent responding to a scientist’s insightful prompt by successfully identifying a completely novel approach to curing cancer, along with a detailed and actionable plan for implementing it. Given the toll of cancer on our species, I suspect few today would consider that a bad outcome.
But as a former medical school dean who was regularly called upon to adjudicate complex issues of credit, I’m uncertain how credit for such a future world-changing discovery would or should be assigned. Until today, human scientists have been the agents responsible for discovering cancer cures, and for doing so they (and key associates) have been showered with academic credit and awards, perhaps even a Nobel Prize. Are we now entering a world in which some (or all) Nobels will be awarded to Claude, ChatGPT, or their AI successors, rather than human scientists? And if so, would it matter?
The Nobel statutes don’t mention “human” but refer instead to “persons.” In 2024, two of the three winners of the Nobel Prize in chemistry were given credit for their work on the AlphaFold model at DeepMind — even though many more were involved. So without changes to the rules, a future prize for a discovery made by AI would most likely go to some “persons” given credit for making the AI possible — at least at first. But the committee may elect to change the rules or interpret them differently. The Nobel Peace Prize, for instance, has gone to organizations rather than persons.
Today, credit for discovery plays a central role in the reward structure of science. As “the currency of the realm,” credit powerfully influences the norms and practices of the research ecosystem. It’s required for scientists to secure appointments, promotions, funding, access to students, and other necessities. It’s also a mechanism for evaluating research impact and providing accountability for research claims.
It didn’t always work this way. The current credit ecosystem arose in the mid-19th century, as science emerged as a profession alongside the rise of the modern scientific journal. It’s been further modified by many factors, from today’s online publishing platforms to new means for assessing and quantifying scientific impact, and the increasingly interdisciplinary and team-based nature of research.
As we begin to acknowledge AI as a generator of scientific discovery, will the approach to scientific credit be transformed as well? Current and future scientists would certainly like to know.
Despite many unknowns, it’s hard to imagine the status quo holding. In perhaps the most likely outcome, humans will continue to be responsible for many discoveries, often aided by AI along the way. The credit ecosystem will continue to recognize these human achievements, while finding ways to appropriately recognize the contributions of their AI collaborators.
But if AI itself is recognized as the responsible agent for some discoveries — even profoundly important ones, such as a cancer cure mentioned above — how would credit be handled? Would assignment of credit as we know it today even matter?
In that world, humans might retain (for a while) a desire to acknowledge the role of AI in those discoveries, even bestowing previously human-only awards upon the responsible AI agents. Perhaps some credit would also go to their human creators, those putting forth insightful prompts, and those creatively implementing the work.
But in a world of predominantly AI-driven discovery, the current role of credit as an incentive for the human research ecosystem would dramatically change.
In considering this future, we must consider another role that credit plays. Beyond serving as an incentive and accountability mechanism in the human academic research ecosystem, there are commercial incentives for discovery, and credit plays a different role in that setting. A major commercial incentive for biomedical research involves the awarding of patents for discovery, and today only humans are eligible to be named discoverers. If future laws change to allow recognition of AI agents and/or their human creators as discoverers (with or without human collaborators), how might this affect accountability, ownership, and the ability to profit from discoveries?
For research conducted today in both academic organizations and for-profit companies, ownership of intellectual property is generally held by these organizations rather than the human discoverers now named in patents. Patent law might evolve to allow organizations to name AI agents — even proprietary AI versions — as discoverers. But assigning credit would remain complicated to the extent humans will likely play creative roles in successfully implementing AI-generated ideas, though efforts are underway to create AI-automated research systems.
Today, the science community is composed of humans who seek and often compete with others for discovery as well as credit, and this feature of scientific culture is believed to play an important role in the success of the enterprise. As AI becomes a key enabler and even primary driver of discovery, the current culture of credit will evolve to accommodate that reality. Changes to the credit economy may be among the many trade-offs we accept to realize the benefits of AI-driven discovery, in biomedical research and other domains of human activity.
Whether an AI agent will ever receive a Nobel laureate is, at least in part, a question about what jobs we want credit to perform. If it’s mainly an incentive for human scientists and the overall enterprise, its role will change as machines play a greater role in discovery. If credit continues to influence allocation of trust, resources, and responsibility, those needs will persist, necessitating decisions on how best to manage them in an AI dominated research ecosystem. This may be further complicated by recent debates about whether AI agents may evolve into moral agents whose status would justify their receiving credit for “their work.”
I don’t know how these questions will ultimately be resolved. And I suspect the answers will differ across diverse domains related to research: human scientific careers, journals, funders, universities, biopharmaceutical companies, patent offices, and yes, prize committees. The current system was designed for a world of human discoverers. Though that day may never be fully behind us, we must begin serious conversations about what changes the age of AI science will bring to scientific credit.
Jeffrey S. Flier is a Harvard University distinguished service professor and the former dean of Harvard Medical School.
