A startup in the US is ambitious to develop artificial intelligence, which can conduct research to find new drugs and detect science, in a very short time.
John Gregoire (right) left the California Institute of Technology to direct research in Lila. Image: New York Times
Lila Sciences Company has recently shared its ambition to revolutionize scientific chemistry through artificial intelligence (AI). The start -up company in Cambridge, Massachusetts has worked secretly for two years to create artificial intelligence to solve the biggest challenges of mankind.
Based on the team of experienced scientists and $ 200 million in the initial budget, Lila is developing a program that is trained based on experimental and published data, as well as scientific thinking and thinking. After that, the startup company let AI software conduct experiments in the automatic lab with several assisted scientists.
In projects proving technology, Lila’s AI creates many new antibodies to deal with epidemics and develop new materials to seize carbon from the atmosphere. Lila turned those experiments into a practical result in the laboratory for a few months, while usually it takes several years. Lila’s experiment convinces many scientists who believe AI will soon perform the hypothesis – experiment – test faster than ever. In some cases, AI may even go beyond human imagination with inventions. “Who will energy for the next evolution of the scientific method,” said Geoffrey von Maltzahn, CEO of Lila, a doctor of biomedical and medical physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The urge to renovate the scientific detection process based on the power of the creator, which attracts the community’s concern with the introduction of Openai’s ChatGPT more than two years ago. New technology is trained with data on the Internet and can answer questions, write reports and compose the same email like humans. The new AI generation has launched an unlimited trade and investment race from technology companies including Openai, Microsoft and Google.
Lila applies a focused approach to science to train those who create, providing it with research articles, experiments and data from the lifestyle and material science and material science of the company’s rapidly developing material. The team in Lila believes that it will give technology both depth in science and diverse capabilities, similar to the way of chatbot writing poetry and computer code.
However, Lila and all companies are seeking to exploit super artificial intelligence will face big challenges. While AI revolutionize many areas, including drug detection, it is unclear whether this technology is just a useful tool or is on the rise or overcome all human abilities.
Because Lila operates secretly, outside scientists cannot evaluate their results and the initial scientific achievement does not necessarily ensure success, because obstacles cannot be predicted often.
Lila was founded inside the Flagship Pioneering, venture capital, which has created many biotechnology companies, including the CIVIV-19 Moderna vaccine manufacturing company. Flagship conducts scientific research, focusing on breakthroughs that are likely to take place within a few years and can prove the value of trade, according to Noubar Afeyan, founder and CEO of Flagship. Lila is the result of the merger of two initial company projects in Flagship, a focus on new materials and one biology. The two groups seek to solve the same problem and recruit with people, so they combine forces with each other, according to Molly Gibson, computerist and Lila co -founder.
The team in Lila has completed 5 projects to prove AI’s ability to develop, the powerful version of one of the rising sophisticated assistants is called the agent. In each case, scientists have no professional expertise in the topic, typing requires what they want the program who achieves. After the screenings, the scientist worked with AI as a partner, conducted experiments and tested the results from time to time, gradually reaching the desired goal.
One of those projects found a new catalyst to produce green hydrogen, including using electricity to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen. Who is instructed in catalysts need to be abundant or easy to produce, unlike Iridium, commercial standards today. With the support of AI, the two scientists found a new catalyst for 4 months, the process lasted annually if used for conventional methods.
That success contributed to persuading John Gregoire, an outstanding researcher on new materials to produce clean energy, leaving the California Technology Institute last year to join Lila as the Head of Physics Science Research Department. George Church, geneticist in Harvard, is famous for pioneering research on genome and DNA synthesis, recently became Lila’s key scientist.
The initial projects still have a long way before creating products ready to launch. Currently, Lila is working with partners to commercialize the idea of being born from the laboratory. Lila is expanding the laboratory area in the 6 -storey flagship building in Cambridge, along the Charles. In the next two years, Lila planned to move to a separate building, increasing the laboratory area by thousands of m2, opening offices in San Francisco and London.
“Our goal is really to provide AI to conduct scientific methods to come up with new ideas, eventually entering the lab and checking that idea,” Gibson said.
Earlier, experts agreed one of the great application potentials of AI was promoting and revolution to detect and develop science. To be loaded with huge scientific data, AI promises to create new drugs to fight disease, change agriculture to provide food for the world population and materials to help produce green energy, all with a small part of time compared to traditional research.
Many technology companies such as Microsoft and Google are creating AI tools for scientific research and cooperation with partners in areas such as drug detection. In particular, the Nobel Prize last year was given to AI’s group of scientists to predict and produce protein.