AI is fueling a revolution in science that may change our definition of understanding itself.

This is Atlantic Intelligence, an eight-week series in which The Atlantic’s leading thinkers on AI will help you understand the complexity and opportunities of this groundbreaking technology. Sign up here.

Artificial intelligence is changing the way some scientists conduct research, leading to new discoveries on accelerated timetables. As The Atlantic’s Matteo Wong explores in a recent article, AI is assisting in drug discovery and more: “Neuroscientists at Meta and elsewhere, for instance, are turning artificial neural networks trained to ‘see’ photographs or ‘read’ text into hypotheses for how the brain processes both images and language. Biologists are using AI trained on genetic data to study rare diseases, improve immunotherapies, and better understand SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern.”

But these advances have a drawback. AI, through its inhuman ability to process and find connections between huge quantities of data, is also obfuscating how these breakthroughs happen, by producing results without explanation. Unlike human researchers, the technology tends not to show its work—a curious development for the scientific method that calls into question the meaning of knowledge itself.

— Damon Beres, senior editor

Science Is Becoming Less Human

By Matteo Wong

This summer, a pill intended to treat a chronic, incurable lung disease entered mid-phase human trials. Previous studies have demonstrated that the drug is safe to swallow, although whether it will improve symptoms of the painful fibrosis that it targets remains unknown; this is what the current trial will determine, perhaps by next year. Such a tentative advance would hardly be newsworthy, except for a wrinkle in the medicine’s genesis: It is likely the first drug fully designed by artificial intelligence to come this far in the development pipeline …

Medicine is just one aspect of a broader transformation in science. In only the past few months, AI has appeared to predict tropical storms with similar accuracy and much more speed than conventional models; Meta has released a model that can analyze brain scans to reproduce what a person is looking at; Google recently used AI to propose millions of new materials that could enhance supercomputers, electric vehicles, and more. Just as the technology has blurred the line between human-created and computer-generated text and images—upending how people work, learn, and socialize—AI tools are accelerating and refashioning some of the basic elements of science.

Read the full article.

What to Read Next

Earlier this week, OpenAI and Axel Springer—the media conglomerate behind publications such as Business Insider and Politico—announced a landmark deal that will bring news stories into ChatGPT. I wrote about the partnership and what it suggests about the changing internet: “ChatGPT is becoming more capable at the same time that its underlying technology is destroying much of the web as we’ve known it.”

Here are some other recent stories that are worth your time:

P.S.

My son will not be receiving any AI-infused toys for Christmas this year (I saw M3GAN), but the market for such things exists. The musician Grimes is working with OpenAI and the start-up Curio to launch a new plush that will use AI to converse with children. The ultimate goal is to develop toys that exhibit “a degree of some kind of pseudo consciousness,” according to a statement given to The Washington Post by Sam Eaton, Curio’s president. And to think my Furby used to freak me out.

— Damon

QOSHE - What Happens When AI Takes Over Science? - Damon Beres
menu_open
Columnists Actual . Favourites . Archive
We use cookies to provide some features and experiences in QOSHE

More information  .  Close
Aa Aa Aa
- A +

What Happens When AI Takes Over Science?

6 0
15.12.2023

AI is fueling a revolution in science that may change our definition of understanding itself.

This is Atlantic Intelligence, an eight-week series in which The Atlantic’s leading thinkers on AI will help you understand the complexity and opportunities of this groundbreaking technology. Sign up here.

Artificial intelligence is changing the way some scientists conduct research, leading to new discoveries on accelerated timetables. As The Atlantic’s Matteo Wong explores in a recent article, AI is assisting in drug discovery and more: “Neuroscientists at Meta and elsewhere, for instance, are turning artificial neural networks trained to ‘see’ photographs or ‘read’ text into hypotheses for how the brain processes both images and language. Biologists are using AI trained on genetic data to study rare diseases, improve immunotherapies, and better understand SARS-CoV-2 variants........

© The Atlantic


Get it on Google Play