Open and Sustainable AI: challenges, opportunities and the road ahead in the life sciences
Journal:
arXiv
Published Date:
May 22, 2025
Abstract
Artificial intelligence (AI) has recently seen transformative breakthroughs
in the life sciences, expanding possibilities for researchers to interpret
biological information at an unprecedented capacity, with novel applications
and advances being made almost daily. In order to maximise return on the
growing investments in AI-based life science research and accelerate this
progress, it has become urgent to address the exacerbation of long-standing
research challenges arising from the rapid adoption of AI methods. We review
the increased erosion of trust in AI research outputs, driven by the issues of
poor reusability and reproducibility, and highlight their consequent impact on
environmental sustainability. Furthermore, we discuss the fragmented components
of the AI ecosystem and lack of guiding pathways to best support Open and
Sustainable AI (OSAI) model development. In response, this perspective
introduces a practical set of OSAI recommendations directly mapped to over 300
components of the AI ecosystem. Our work connects researchers with relevant AI
resources, facilitating the implementation of sustainable, reusable and
transparent AI. Built upon life science community consensus and aligned to
existing efforts, the outputs of this perspective are designed to aid the
future development of policy and structured pathways for guiding AI
implementation.
