# Towards a Science Exocortex

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.17809 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.17809/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 87 of its 196 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 24 Jun 2024.

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 87)

- [Attention Is All You Need](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1706.03762/) (2017)
- [Learning Transferable Visual Models From Natural Language Supervision](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.00020/) (2021)
- [High-Resolution Image Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2112.10752/) (2021)
- [Training language models to follow instructions with human feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.02155/) (2022)
- [Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2201.11903/) (2022)
- [Hierarchical Text-Conditional Image Generation with CLIP Latents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.06125/) (2022)
- [3D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Radiance Field Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04079/) (2023)
- [On the Opportunities and Risks of Foundation Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.07258/) (2021)
- [Tree of Thoughts: Deliberate Problem Solving with Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.10601/) (2023)
- [ViLBERT: Pretraining Task-Agnostic Visiolinguistic Representations for Vision-and-Language Tasks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.02265/) (2019)
- [Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Large Language Models: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.10997/) (2023)
- [Fine-Tuning Language Models from Human Preferences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.08593/) (2019)
- [Zero-1-to-3: Zero-shot One Image to 3D Object](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11328/) (2023)
- [Align your Latents: High-Resolution Video Synthesis with Latent Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.08818/) (2023)
- [The Rise and Potential of Large Language Model Based Agents: A Survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.07864/) (2023)
- [4D Gaussian Splatting for Real-Time Dynamic Scene Rendering](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.08528/) (2023)
- [Progress measures for grokking via mechanistic interpretability](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2301.05217/) (2023)
- [Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.05782/) (2023)
- [Large Language Model based Multi-Agents: A Survey of Progress and Challenges](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.01680/) (2024)
- [The Linear Representation Hypothesis and the Geometry of Large Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.03658/) (2023)
- [Fantasia3D: Disentangling Geometry and Appearance for High-quality Text-to-3D Content Creation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.13873/) (2023)
- [What learning algorithm is in-context learning? Investigations with linear models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2211.15661/) (2022)
- [The Dawn of LMMs: Preliminary Explorations with GPT-4V(ision)](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.17421/) (2023)
- [ChemCrow: Augmenting large-language models with chemistry tools](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.05376/) (2023)
- [Eliciting Latent Predictions from Transformers with the Tuned Lens](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08112/) (2023)
- [Scaling Laws for Autoregressive Generative Modeling](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.14701/) (2020)
- [Mixture-of-Agents Enhances Large Language Model Capabilities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.04692/) (2024)
- [CAT3D: Create Anything in 3D with Multi-View Diffusion Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.10314/) (2024)
- [Emergent World Representations: Exploring a Sequence Model Trained on a Synthetic Task](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.13382/) (2022)
- [Harnessing the Power of LLMs in Practice: A Survey on ChatGPT and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.13712/) (2023)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [VISION: A Modular AI Assistant for Natural Human-Instrument Interaction at Scientific User Facilities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.18161/) (2024)
- [A Comprehensive Review of AI Agents: Transforming Possibilities in Technology and Beyond](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.11957/) (2025)
- [Perspective on Utilizing Foundation Models for Laboratory Automation in Materials Research](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.12312/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Artificial intelligence (AI) methods are poised to revolutionize intellectual work, with generative AI enabling automation of text analysis, text generation, and simple decision making or reasoning. The impact to science is only just beginning, but the opportunity is significant since scientific research relies fundamentally on extended chains of cognitive work. Here, we review the state of the art in agentic AI systems, and discuss how these methods could be extended to have even greater impact on science. We propose the development of an exocortex, a synthetic extension of a person's cognition. A science exocortex could be designed as a swarm of AI agents, with each agent individually streamlining specific researcher tasks, and whose inter-communication leads to emergent behavior that greatly extend the researcher's cognition and volition.