AI and the Evolving Role of the Scientific Paper (opens in new tab)

Vinton G. Cerf’s February 2026 Communications Cerf’s Up column, “Does AI Now Represent a Paradigm Shift?” rightly characterizes modern AI systems as a departure from traditional computing models: probabilistic rather than deterministic, emergent rather than explicitly programmed. But if AI represents a paradigm shift in how computation is performed, the more profound shift may lie in what AI now makes possible for scientific communication itself—across all domains, not just computer science.