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As the Trump administration’s ‘Science: A New Golden Age’ looks to let artificial intelligence guide technological development and retain supremacy, the EU must present an alternative vision based on values of cooperation, human curiosity, openness and global commitment, writes Thomas Jørgensen.
Over the summer, the Trump administration presented a vision for the future of research and innovation. ‘Science: A New Golden Age’ is the most radical paper on science policy that a Western government has presented for many years, if not decades.
Rightly, the vision has already been a topic of discussion in research policy circles. Although it goes against the ideals of most of the academic community – at least here in Europe – it is a vision that absolutely needs to be taken seriously. It needs a response and an alternative.
Concretely , the vision takes the challenges facing science as its point of departure. Its author, Michael Kratsios, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, highlights that results are coming more slowly, they are often not reproducible, and they are less spectacular in terms of furthering our understanding of the physical world. And he adds that rigid structures, unhelpful incentives and unattractive careers block interdisciplinarity and novelty.
This diagnosis isn’t controversial, nor unique to the United States. Indeed, many of the challenges it identifies are all too familiar here in Europe. But once the paper starts to outline its approach to remedying them, the red flags start to emerge.
Efficiency and goal-orientation loom large in the document, sometimes explicitly and sometimes implicitly. For example, part of the solution offered by the vision is to have more political focus through mission-based research, i.e. in the form of new types of ‘focused research organizations’ that are limited in time and aimed at one specific goal.
The more alarming issue with the vision is that it sees research and innovation as a zero-sum game, where the United States must be the sole winner in a global race for power. For this reason, discovery must be protected for use by US companies, and foreign students or early-stage researchers must be limited. Cooperation is described as a risk, not the default for research.
The paper’s scientific protectionism is a mistake. Science needs cooperation exactly because science is getting harder. We need to cooperate globally to get new results, as well as to build and run global infrastructures like CERN, the Square Kilometre Array and the International Space Station. Besides that, all advanced economies need an influx of talent.
In short, the vision goes against the ideal that knowledge should be shared by humanity as a whole.
So, how does the Trump administration plan to ensure the US is a global winner while refusing to cooperate and attract researchers from across the world? To cut through this Gordian Knot, they want to put AI in the driving seat.
There are radical images in the report of robot-driven laboratories, AI-ready data and automated research processes. The report goes further than just applying AI to research, asserting that it should also assess projects’ likely impact and play a role in the selection and planning of research. Well aware that endless replication of sloppy AI research is an Achilles heel of the vision, it also calls for specialised AI to control the quality and reproducibility of research results.
Such an AI-driven research system is only partly science fiction. The AI drive in research is progressing. Organizations like the OECD have – like the White House – pointed to AI’s possible applications.
Robot labs exist. AI-ready data is already a major endeavour in many disciplines. But if this vision did become a reality, where would it lead?
We could imagine leading research and technology powers closing in on themselves, relying on technology instead of international cooperation. Perhaps this system would even be more efficient, and create more knowledge in a more purposeful way than open collaborative systems. However, the quest for efficiency can easily become an iron cage that limits creativity and curiosity.
Europe must present an alternative to knowledge as self-serving efficiency.
Despite wishes for technological sovereignty and worries about foreign interference, Europe remains the standard-bearer of collaborative knowledge exemplified by its globally open research and education programmes. Europe is also the place that takes pride in putting humans above machines. While the US looks to let AI guide its technological development with a goal to retain supremacy, the EU must give the example that another world is possible.
But simply protecting the status quo or continuing slow reforms by a coalition of the willing is not a viable strategy. Neither is focusing only on the future of the Horizon Europe programme.
The EU is the only place that can present an alternative vision based on different values, values of cooperation, human curiosity, openness and global commitment. In other words, another vision that looks forward and accepts the change that comes from technology, but shapes it according to its own beliefs.
Whether through the structures of the European Research Area or as a stand-alone project, articulating this alternative should be an immediate priority in Brussels.
