Visions of a Future Research Workplace Arising from Recent Foresight Exercises

The results of recent foresight projects reveal the impact of future ICT tools on the practice of scientific research. This paper presents several aspects of the process of building scenarios and trends of selected advanced ICT technologies. We point out the implications of emerging global expert systems (GESs) and AI-based learning platforms (AILPs). GESs will be capable of using and processing global knowledge from all available sources, such as databases, repositories, video streams, interactions with other researchers and knowledge processing units. In many scientific disciplines, the high volume, density and increasing level of interconnection of data have already exhausted the capacities of any individual researcher. Three trends may dominate the development of scientific methodology. Collective research is one possible coping strategy: Group intellectual capacity makes it possible to tackle complex problems. Recent data flow forecasts indicate that even in the few areas, which still resist ICT domination, research based on data gathered in non-ICT supported collections will soon reach its performance limits due to the ever-growing amount of knowledge to be acquired, verified, exchanged and communicated between researchers. Growing automation of research is the second option: Automated expert systems will be capable of selecting and processing knowledge to the level of a professionally edited scientific paper, with only minor human involvement. The third trend is intensive development and deployment of brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) to quickly access and process data. Specifically, GESs and AILPs can be used together with BCIs. The above approaches may eventually merge, forming a few AI-related technological scenarios, as discussed to conclude the paper.