AI & Scientific Discovery

When I hear the Silicon Valley elite wax poetic about the potential of AI, I am struck by a glaring flaw in their reasoning. They make grandiose claims about what AI will do, from solving the climate crisis and eradicating poverty to curing cancer. These promises ring hollow and I suspect that deep down most people can sense the malodorous bullshit emanating from such statements. The idea that AI alone will be our savior, magically resolving the most complex and deeply rooted challenges facing humanity, is not only unrealistic but also insulting to our collective intelligence.

If we want AI to benefit humanity, we need more than such grand promises. We need leaders who communicate a realistic narrative about the technology's genuine potential to make groundbreaking discoveries. People need concrete examples of AI's ability to do the important—and superhuman work—of navigating vast data spaces, uncovering novel insights, and collaborating with human expertise. Only then will people have a realistic perspective on how AI can transform scientific discovery.

To grasp the vision for AI’s transformative impact on scientific discovery and creativity, we first need a mental model for the concept of combinatorial space or the space of possibilities.

Imagine a wilderness with its high peaks, deep valleys, trees, and deserts. As a human, you search this space by following well-trodden paths. At a human scale it’s impossible to efficiently move across the landscape without using paths taken by those before you. This landscape is also full of places where humans can’t go, where the world is so hostile or foreign that it is essentially unsearchable. We are cut off from its contents.

In science, traditional human search strategies are like wandering through a wilderness with limited visibility, relying on intuition and serendipity. In the pursuit of new insights, we can choose to follow the well-worn paths trodden by others or venture along the trails revealed by low-dimensional data. AI, in contrast, can take in the whole landscape, quickly and effectively exploring the vast range of possible combinations. That's what gives AI the power to reveal hidden paths and uncover new territory.