Are you a scientist? People have idealized views of science.

>>> Yes but science is well-structures and practically designed about repeatability so its a lot easier to automate than "softer" disciplines.

What AI is up against is that science is already automated to a high degree, so the AI doesn't just need to automate things, but it has to automate things better. Also, a lot of science work is in dealing with boundary conditions, edge cases, exceptions, hypotheses, and so forth. That work is essentially chaotic.

Do I think AI can improve automation? Sure. Everything I do in the lab is automated, and I use the AI coding assistant.