AI Readiness for Social Impact

The adoption of AI in science has shown immense potential to advance research, particularly in the life and physical sciences. With the rapid growth in the availability and power of AI models, we stand at a critical juncture: all scientific fields must prepare to benefit from AI while avoiding resource fragmentation. At the same time, the principles of open science and trustworthy AI must be integrated throughout research lifecycles, from design to execution, supported by best practices and environments for AI-based open science.The AI4SOCIAL+ project advances AI readiness and machine actionability within the European Open Source Cloud ecosystem through three actions: (1) building a common AI Readiness Framework to assess the adoption of AI across research lifecycles with best data practices and stewardship; (2) Bringing tools for machine-actionability in federated data repositories; and (3) Implementing a user-friendly and portable AI-ready infrastructure platform. These efforts ensure that the benefits of AI reach all areas of scientific research. Starting with the social sciences and humanities, AI4SOCIAL+ will enable effective and positive societal change.Our approach is interdisciplinary and based on co-design. We engage community stakeholders, developers, researchers, and AI engineers to co-design the AI Readiness Framework through five diverse use cases. These AI-assisted research cases provide evidence-based validation for the iterative development and extensibility of the project’s actions. A sustainable Competence Centre will support continuous learning and community engagement, driving cultural and practical change in AI adoption. By aligning with EU AI strategies, AI4SOCIAL+ empowers researchers to conduct novel AI-based studies while ensuring scientific integrity, data quality, transparency, reuse, and verification. The project will expand beyond academia to foster a dynamic community of AI champions across industry, IT, and public administration.