The Quest for A.I. ‘Scientific Superintelligence’ The Quest for A.I. ‘Scientific Superintelligence’

An ambitious start-up embodies new optimism that artificial intelligence can turbocharge scientific discovery.

Across the spectrum of uses for artificial intelligence, one stands out.

The big, inspiring A.I. opportunity on the horizon, experts agree, lies in accelerating and transforming scientific discovery and development. Fed by vast troves of scientific data, A.I. promises to generate new drugs to combat disease, new agriculture to feed the world’s population and new materials to unlock green energy — all in a tiny fraction of the time of traditional research.

Technology companies like Microsoft and Google are making A.I. tools for science and collaborating with partners in fields like drug discovery. And the Nobel Prize in Chemistry last year went to scientists using A.I. to predict and create proteins.

This month, Lila Sciences went public with its own ambitions to revolutionize science through A.I. The start-up, which is based in Cambridge, Mass., had worked in secret for two years “to build scientific superintelligence to solve humankind’s greatest challenges.”

Relying on an experienced team of scientists and $200 million in initial funding, Lila has been developing an A.I. program trained on published and experimental data, as well as the scientific process and reasoning. The start-up then lets that A.I. software run experiments in automated, physical labs with a few scientists to assist.

Already, in projects demonstrating the technology, Lila’s A.I. has generated novel antibodies to fight disease and developed new materials for capturing carbon from the atmosphere. Lila turned those experiments into physical results in its lab within months, a process that most likely would take years with conventional research.