Community insights on AI: reflections from the ELIXIR-UK All Hands 2025

This report summarises the discussions held during the artificial intelligence (AI) panel and World Café sessions at the ELIXIR-UK All Hands 2025 meeting, held on 23–24 October in Exeter. The sessions brought together researchers, infrastructure providers and industry partners to examine how AI is influencing research practices, skills development and the sustainability of data and compute resources across the UK. Panel discussions highlighted concerns about critical thinking, skills erosion, intellectual property risks, the exposure of sensitive data, and the sustainability of open data infrastructures, alongside the need for rigorous validation of AI outputs. Participants emphasised that AI is not yet ready for widespread clinical application and stressed the importance of users maintaining sufficient expertise to interpret and debug model outputs.

Across six themed World Café tables, attendees explored bias in AI models, future workforce changes, essential skills for AI-enabled research, data access and model-building challenges, transparency in AI-generated content, and the realistic gains and trade-offs associated with productivity tools. Common themes included the need for transparency, responsible governance, inclusive and ethical practices and training that prioritises critical judgement over technical shortcuts.

The insights captured here represent community perspectives and are intended to inform forthcoming ELIXIR-UK activities and the development of an AI strategy, including contributions to the ELIXIR AI Ecosystem Focus Group. They do not constitute agreed positions or formal recommendations of ELIXIR-UK.