AI-Empowered Astronomy
for Open Science

On 25 August 2023, the UN General Assembly proclaimed the period 2024-2033 as the International Decade of Sciences for Sustainable Development. In UNESCO's Strategic Plan for the Implementation of the Science Decade, the Decade stakeholders are invited to develop, implement and engage in a variety of initiatives, actions, programs and other endeavors to achieve a goal that, by 2033, open science is widely and equitably used to democratize scientific processes and ensure access to scientific knowledge.

One suitable subject for open science is astronomy, which has now entered a new AI-empowered era of time-domain and multi-messenger observations of the dynamical Universe. We anticipate new breakthroughs in revealing new physics on the extreme conditions of high energy, density, gravity and magnetic fields. But this will not be possible without collaborative international efforts by all astronomers and AI scientists. As an effort along this line, Zhejiang Lab and NAOC proposed an international big science program, the Global Open Transient Telescope Array (GOTTA), to UNESCO with the ambition to promote collaborative infrastructure for time-domain astronomy driven by AI.

Driven by the urgent need to build consensus in the community to develop open and interdisciplinary solutions, Zhejiang Lab and NAOC will jointly host a conference, titled AI-Empowered Astronomy for Open Science, on 7-9th April 2025 at Zhejiang Lab, Hangzhou. This meeting will discuss how to build AI infrastructures to empower astronomical mega projects such as GOTTA, how these infrastructures will promote the ongoing paradigm shift in research, outreach and education, and how to implement world-wide such sustainable and equitable solutions.