  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.
