Submitted:
29 June 2026
Posted:
01 July 2026
You are already at the latest version
Abstract
Artificial Intelligence for Science (AI4S) is a pivotal research frontier revolutionizing scientific discovery, yet it suffers from fragmentation and lacks system-level exploration. This survey unifies its landscape: it defines AI4S against related concepts, verifies its status as the fifth scientific paradigm, and presents a six-layer framework and five-tier autonomy taxonomy. It also summarizes key techniques, core challenges and future directions, aiming to guide relevant research and infrastructure development.
Keywords:
artificial intelligence for science
; levels of autonomy
; six-layer hierarchical framework
; autonomous scientific discovery
; scientific foundation models
Copyright: This open access article is published under a Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license, which permit the free download, distribution, and reuse, provided that the author and preprint are cited in any reuse.
