A survey on the rise of the AI scientists: Accelerating discovery and confronting ethical frontiers

Large Language Models (LLMs) are rapidly revolutionizing scientific research. These tools, powered by LLMs, are not just assistants for tasks such as literature synthesis, hypothesis generation, pattern identification, and research paper writing, but are evolving into autonomous discovery systems. This review explores the capabilities of these 'AI Scientists' and compares leading entities like Sakana AI's autonomous system and Google's collaborative 'AI co-scientist'. While these advancements promise unprecedented acceleration of scientific progress, they also bring significant ethical challenges, such as bias amplification, reproducibility, transparency, authorship, and equity. By identifying current limitations and analyzing these challenges, we aim to ensure the responsible use of AI in scientific discovery.