Chinese academy of sciences member ewen nan predicts the rise of amateur scientists in the AI era

On October 17, at the Guanghua Thought Forum, Ewen Nan, a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and professor at Peking University, stated that artificial intelligence, being a combination of mathematics and computer engineering, will significantly lower the research barrier and promote 'research equality.' He predicted that future amateur scientists will become the main force in research, as open laboratories and cloud services will allow any team or individual with ideas and capabilities to participate in technological innovation. Nan highlighted that enterprises lack original innovation and compete mainly on management and pricing, leading to 'overcompetition' due to insufficient innovation capacity. He noted that high-end industrial software and CNC systems are currently dependent on foreign technology but argued that China can achieve self-reliance and even 'overtake in a new way' within a short period, potentially developing an AI-native industrial software system that could rival or surpass Siemens within one to two years. Nan also warned that the current research system will face significant challenges in the AI era. He used the mathematics community as an example, noting that if top journals received a hundredfold increase in submissions, the system would be unprepared. He emphasized that disruptive innovation largely depends on free exploration rather than task-driven approaches, criticizing the misconception that equating free exploration with writing papers is a mistake.