A new AI tool from Google solves a 10-year scientific problem in just two days.
Researchers at Imperial College London were testing out Alphabet's new tool. They feed it a short prompt about how certain superbugs develop resistance to antibiotics - a subject that had puzzled scientists for years. Within moments, the 'co-scientist' generated several possible answers, one of which the team instantly recognised to be correct.
"This effectively meant that the algorithm was able to look at the available evidence, analyse the possibilities, ask questions, design experiments and propose the very same hypothesis that we arrived at through years of painstaking scientific research, but in a fraction of the time,” said Professor José Penadés, from Imperial’s Department of Infectious Disease.
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“This type of AI ‘co-scientist’ platform is still at an early stage, but we can already see how it has the potential to supercharge science.”
What's interesting is the valuable time and resources the AI tool could save as it has the potential to identify 'dead ends' in experiments noted Dr. Tiago Dias da Costa, co-lead of the research.
“What our findings show is that AI has the potential to synthesise all the available evidence and direct us to the most important questions and experimental designs,” he added.
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“If the system works as well as we hope it could, this could be game-changing.”
The goal of the tool is not to replace traditional experiments but instead transform how scientists approach complex problems. One way could be to generate likely hypotheses.
Applying the technology's capabilities to global health crises like antimicrobial resistance (AMR) - a growing threat that claims millions of lives each year - could change scientific research and medical treatments as we know them.
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AMR, referred to by LiveScience as a 'silent pandemic,' is one of the greatest health challenges of our time, and is scarily accelerating due to the overuse and misuse of antibiotics in medicine and agriculture.
“The world is facing multiple complex challenges – from pandemics to environmental sustainability and food security,” said Professor Mary Ryan from Imperial College London.
“To address these urgent needs means accelerating traditional R&D processes and artificial intelligence will increasingly support scientific discovery and pioneering developments.
“Our scientists are among the most talented in the world, with the curiosity and lateral thinking needed to exploit AI technologies for societal good. Starting with new avenues for biomedical research and sowing the seeds for greater scientific efficiency – the prospects could be game-changing.”
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The researchers published their findings in February earlier this year on the preprint server bioRxiv, and are yet to be peer-reviewed.