Google's New AI Generates Hypotheses for Researchers
Freeman writes:
https://arstechnica.com/google/2025/02/googles-new-ai-generates-hypotheses-for-researchers/
Over the past few years, Google has embarked on a quest to jam generative AI into every product and initiative possible. Google has robots summarizing search results, interacting with your apps, and analyzing the data on your phone. And sometimes, the output of generative AI systems can be surprisingly good despite lacking any real knowledge. But can they do science?
Google Research is now angling to turn AI into a scientist-well, a "co-scientist."
[...]
This is still a generative AI system like Gemini, so it doesn't truly have any new ideas or knowledge. However, it can extrapolate from existing data to potentially make decent suggestions. At the end of the process, Google's AI co-scientist spits out research proposals and hypotheses. The human scientist can even talk with the robot about the proposals in a chatbot interface.
[...]
Today's popular AI systems have a well-known problem with accuracy. Generative AI always has something to say, even if the model doesn't have the right training data or model weights to be helpful, and fact-checking with more AI models can't work miracles.
[...]
However, Google partnered with several universities to test some of the AI research proposals in the laboratory. For example, the AI suggested repurposing certain drugs for treating acute myeloid leukemia, and laboratory testing suggested it was a viable idea. Research at Stanford University also showed that the AI co-scientist's ideas about treatment for liver fibrosis were worthy of further study.This is compelling work, certainly, but calling this system a "co-scientist" is perhaps a bit grandiose. Despite the insistence from AI leaders that we're on the verge of creating living, thinking machines, AI isn't anywhere close to being able to do science on its own.
[...]
Google says it wants more researchers working with this AI system in the hope it can assist with real research. Interested researchers and organizations can apply to be part of the Trusted Tester program, which provides access to the co-scientist UI as well as an API that can be integrated with existing tools.
Read more of this story at SoylentNews.