Document Type

Article

Publication Date

12-2026

Publication Title

Soil Advances

Abstract

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping the world of knowledge-based work, with highly qualified professions appearing more exposed to substitution than routine manual ones. Soil science occupies a hybrid position, being a field that requires extensive knowledge and at the same time a strong dependency on field and laboratory activities, time-consuming and intrinsically “embodied.” This review examines what AI entails for soil science, asking which competencies are more or less exposed, how curricula should respond, and what actions institutions should undertake in the current AI-dominant academic environment. The analysis rests on two axes, namely the AI exposure of a task and its embodiment intensity, that is, its dependence on physical presence, sensory engagement, and tacit knowledge. Soil security supplies the wider context, since disciplinary expertise and the trained workforce are the human capability a society needs to sustain soil security across its biophysical (capacity, condition), social (connectivity), governance (codification), and economic (capital) dimensions. By integrating the economics of AI exposure, education, and workforce in soil science, as well as digital soil mapping and proximal sensing, and by applying a transparent and evidence-based assessment protocol, this perspective argues that field and laboratory competencies form the current “protected core” of the discipline, whereas the analysis, synthesis, mapping, and writing performed at the desk are considerably more exposed. Exposure here denotes scope for acceleration or assistance rather than a forecast of employment, and embodiment raises the cost of automation without settling substitutability. That core is simultaneously under financial and institutional pressure, so that human capability may be squeezed from two directions at once, with automation reaching the desk-based tasks through which soil scientists are trained and cost pressure reaching the field and laboratory teaching it reaches least. Should that pattern hold, reform of curricula and graduate programs, grounded in genuine AI literacy, becomes urgent rather than optional.

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Published in Soil Advances by Elsevier B.V. Available via doi: 10.1016/j.soilad.2026.100140.

This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

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