Science of the future
Science is facing hefty budget cuts at a time of increasingly urgent societal issues, increasing workloads, rising geopolitical tensions, concerns about knowledge security, an anticipated decline in the number of Dutch students, the rapid advance of AI in scientific research and public debates about the societal value of science and about the numbers of foreign students. This combination of factors makes tightening up development strategies and rethinking priorities unavoidable.
Over the next two years – in collaboration with stakeholders from the worlds of practice and policy – we will organise and facilitate discussion of the future of Dutch science, based on monitoring current developments and building on the results of our recent foresight study ‘Knowledge of the Future’
In this dynamic context, we also note a development whose implications are still difficult to grasp, namely the rapid advance of AI in scientific research. What does AI mean for the research process, for the knowledge and skills that researchers require, and for the nature and validity of research results? We will investigate the increasing options for using AI in various research fields. We will examine its effects on research quality and survey what is needed to safeguard quality. In doing so, we will also highlight use of the services provided by foreign tech companies, bearing in mind issues regarding dependency and knowledge security. The central issues are what AI can mean for Dutch science and what needs to be done to ensure that it is utilised responsibly.