In an opinion essay, Jeffrey S. Flier, a Harvard University distinguished service professor and former dean of Harvard Medical School, asks whether an AI agent such as Claude might one day receive the Nobel Prize in medicine. He imagines an AI responding to a scientist's prompt with a novel cancer cure and a plan to implement it, and notes that few would call that a bad outcome. But he says the scientific community needs a serious conversation about how credit would be assigned.
Flier points out that Nobel statutes refer to 'persons' rather than 'humans,' and that the 2024 chemistry prize recognized work on the AlphaFold model at DeepMind. He argues that credit is the currency of the realm in science, influencing appointments, promotions, funding, and accountability. The current credit ecosystem emerged in the mid-19th century and has already been reshaped by online publishing, new metrics, and team-based research.
He says it is hard to imagine the status quo holding. In the most likely near-term outcome, humans remain responsible for discoveries while aided by AI, and credit continues to recognize them. But if AI itself is recognized as the responsible agent, the incentive structure of science would change dramatically. Patent law currently allows only humans to be named discoverers, but laws could evolve to let organizations name AI agents, raising questions about ownership and profit.