Fundamentals
AI for Science: Dreams of Progress
The hype and possibilities of machines that dream of Nobels.
This essay was a collaboration with Codon, a newsletter about the bio + tech advances enabling a brighter future for humanity, and co-authored by Niko McCarty.
It’s a cool 60 degrees in Kobe, Japan.
A small stream of people enter a white building with a honeycomb façade. These guests — like bees to a hive — have come to talk about a future in which an AI makes discoveries and wins big prizes sans people.
This is the second annual workshop for the Nobel Turing Challenge, a program that launched last year to build an AI smart enough to win a Nobel Prize by 2050. Hosted by RIKEN, a renowned research institute, the workshop hosted lectures from bespectacled scientists on topics ranging from chemistry and robots to the future of science.
Dr. Hiroaki Kitano, CEO of Sony AI and the program’s charismatic leader, speaks plainly: Our goal is “to create an alternative form of scientific discovery,” he says, where machines dream up ideas, plan experiments, and execute them with brilliant acumen.
These scientists and their distant dreams sound a bit foolish on paper. After all, what’s wrong with good…
