Presenter: Michelle Barker from Research Software Alliance Australia
The Research Software Engineering in the Age of Generative AI workshop, held in March in Edinburgh, UK, brought together participants to explore how Generative AI may reshape the research software ecosystem, and to help inform a broader community vision for the future of the field. The workshop addressed both the opportunities and risks emerging from the increasing integration of AI into scientific workflows, including faster software development, automation, and broader accessibility, alongside concerns around reliability, reproducibility, provenance, verification, security, and workforce transformation. Through lightning talks, community discussions, surveys, and focused working groups, participants examined how RSE roles, institutional policies, collaboration models, training approaches, and software verification practices may evolve in the coming years. Discussions highlighted the continuing importance of human expertise, trustworthy software practices, and coordinated community action in an AI-enabled research ecosystem.
A major outcome of the workshop was the identification of 46 proposed pilot activities and studies spanning nine thematic areas: institutional policy and narratives, tradeoffs and risk frameworks, software attribution and incentives, verification and validation, evolving RSE roles, training and workforce development, management playbooks, equitable access to AI technologies, and new forms of collaboration between researchers and AI systems. Proposed activities range from lightweight community-driven initiatives and training communities of practice to large-scale empirical studies, ethnographic research, and longitudinal analyses of AI-assisted research software development.
This talk will give an overview of this work and progress since the workshop. See also https://www.researchsoft.org/events/rse-ai-workshop/