At least twice in the past five weeks, researchers have said that they had been working for an extended period on a particular research question, only to learn that artificial-intelligence companies had either answered the question before them or announced results before they were ready to do the same. In response, researchers who are worried that AI tools might scrape their unpublished work and scoop them are limiting their use of such tools. Nevertheless, some AI researchers, although not all, say that AI agents are increasingly likely to reach conclusions before scientists can do so. Researchers are 'going to be scooped, but not because they've uploaded a manuscript', says Geoffrey Irving, chief scientist at Resolution, an AI-safety research organization in Berkeley, California. 'They're going to get scooped because the AIs are very good at solving problems, and they're going to get better and better.' On 7 September, Tristan Buckmaster, a mathematician at New York University in...
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