> Instead the way the funding has been redirected (by the White House OSTP) is based on the assumption that future knowledge will be exclusively AI (sorry SI) generated, so humans not needed.

Can you go into more detail about that? My impression is the real reason the Trump administration has defunded basic science (and so much else) is an unholy combination of "government bad" libertarianism and the belief the funding was going to their ideological opponents.

I feel that and use of AI to justify the redirection is most likely post-hoc.

Echoing what the other reply to your question said, I don't disagree that much of this post-hoc, but I think the thinking has evolved such that this post-hoc reasoning is now truly believed. I'm primarily speaking of it as an observer of how and where funds are being directed and to what ends: often big, non-university-centered programs to build labs or generate datasets for AI discovery. While some of the ideas may have merit, there is no free lunch unfortunately, as that was money that would have supported individual PIs and their trainees.

Going by the public announcements, the original plan was to cut science funding but once Congress said "no," the backup plan became directing it towards non - human - scientist items like facilities operations and the Genesis program.