Google DeepMind and MIT Study Finds 44% of Scientists Say AI Bottleneck Moved Downstream

Google, Google DeepMind and MIT FutureTech report that AI saves researchers about seven hours a week, yet 44 percent of 637 surveyed US and UK scientists say their main bottleneck moved downstream and 41 percent face growing backlogs of untested hypotheses. Co-lead Mihai Codreanu says 88 percent spend more than 10 percent of saved time verifying outputs.

• Codreanu says the study examined 15 million Gemini interactions and 2,690 specialized models alongside the survey.
• Nearly a quarter of respondents cite physical experimentation or data collection as their main bottleneck, Codreanu reports.
• About half of scientists say AI encourages safer, more incremental projects in their own work, according to Codreanu.