Beijing issues 18 articles on AI4S! Encourage AI scientists to take up their posts and create 24-hour unmanned laboratories

Intelligent Stuff Author | Li Shuiqing Editor | Mo Ying What will it look like if there are no scientists in the laboratory of the future, only robots and AI? Late at night, the AI ​​system reads papers and proposes hypotheses. The robotic arm automatically prepares reagents and starts experiments. High-throughput instruments collect data in real time. After the experiment, the model automatically analyzes the results. The entire process does not require manual supervision. During the day, human scientists review hypotheses and experimental results and guide the AI ​​to redesign the next round of experimental plans, freeing them to think about more important issues. This is not a plot in a science fiction movie, but a new picture of scientific research that Beijing hopes to be the first to realize. On July 1, the Beijing Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China’s Educational Science and Technology Talent Work Leading Group officially issued the “Beijing Implementation Plan for Accelerating the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Empowering Scientific Research (2026-2028)” (referred to as the “Implementation Plan”), becoming the first domestically-made AI for Science (AI4S) mid- and long-term implementation plan covering a complete system of independent laboratories, scientific research agents, scientific large models, scientific data centers, and high-value application scenarios. ▲Screenshot of the release page of the "Implementation Plan" It is worth noting that this is also an upgraded version of the "construction drawing" launched in just one year after Beijing took the lead in releasing the country's first provincial AI4S special policy last year. If the 2025 special policy answers "why we need to develop scientific intelligence", then this "Implementation Plan" further answers "how to build it, who will build it, and what kind of building it will take." Focusing on the "Implementation Plan", the document deploys 18 key tasks around the five major directions of independent laboratory construction, benchmark scenario application, scientific model system, scientific data supply, and innovation ecology, and clearly proposes to build a scientific and intelligent innovation center that will radiate around the world by 2028. The most impactful thing is that Beijing should take the lead in building independent laboratories that operate 24 hours a day. That is what was mentioned at the beginning: let AI propose scientific hypotheses, robots perform experimental operations, and the system automatically analyzes the results and optimizes the next round of plans. The picture of "scientists thinking during the day and AI conducting experiments at night" is moving from science fiction to reality. 1. Complete explanation of 18 points of Beijing AI4S