If AI writes the paper, who validates the plankton?: a call to reinvest in empirical expertise before the validation gap becomes irreversible.

Artificial intelligence is already reshaping the production of scientific text, literature synthesis, coding and image-based biological analysis. In plankton research, where automated imaging, molecular surveys and large ecological datasets are expanding rapidly, the critical bottleneck will increasingly be empirical validation: knowing organisms, recognizing artefacts, maintaining cultures, designing biologically meaningful experiments and judging whether automated outputs remain faithful to living plankton. Yet these are precisely the skills that many evaluation systems have allowed to erode. Taxonomy, fieldwork, experimental manipulation, natural history and specimen curation have lost institutional status in a culture that rewards speed, scale and publication volume. The rise of AI makes this loss urgent rather than merely unfortunate. This Horizons article argues that AI will not eliminate the need for plankton experts; it will expose how dangerous it is to lose them. Journals, funders and training programs should therefore revalue empirical expertise, not out of nostalgia, but because taxonomic, experimental and organismal judgment will soon become the bottleneck on which the credibility of AI-assisted plankton science depends.