From Living Systematic Reviews to Fully AI-Driven Reviews

Artificial intelligence (AI) holds great promise for improving systematic reviews, particularly as the number of reviews keeps growing. A solution to keep systematic reviews up to date are the so-called living systematic reviews. Although they could be a solution, they currently face challenges regarding everything having to be done manually. A potential solution could be AI-driven reviews that automate each step, from literature searching and translation to data extraction and analysis. Potentially, AI could search through large amounts of studies, sort them by relevance, and extract relevant data. This significantly reduces the workload for researchers, and thereby gives researchers time to focus on oversight rather than manual tasks. However, these methods raise concerns about algorithmic bias and transparency. Proper training, clear ethical guidelines, and interdisciplinary collaboration are keys to ensuring quality and integrity. AI-driven reviews may become essential for efficiently handling the expanding scientific literature.