The intersection of chemistry and artificial intelligence (AI) is a fascinating area that attracts a lot of attention in both research and industry. We talked to people working in the field about the potential of AI to revolutionize chemical research, but also concerns, (current) limitations, and ethical implications for chemical applications. We also asked for ideas to try or experiment with, as well as useful articles and videos for beginners and advanced users.
Professor Lee Cronin, School of Chemistry, University of Glasgow, UK. His work is motivated by the fascination for complex chemical system.
What fascinates you about AI?
AI/ML [Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning] are great techniques for helping corelate well-defined and well-collected data to give some insight about processes. I think these techniques, when coupled with the scientific method, can be a great help in processing large amounts of data.
Is there anything we should fear?
Science AI/ML are just mathematical techniques. I do not really understand the fear hype, but I do think we should be aware that it is possible to generate false data/models/conclusions, and we should pay attention to this.
Do you have something for our readers to try out or experiment with?
Try asking ChatGPT, with Dall-E, to draw the molecule ethanol or methanol!
Can you recommend a good article/video/website for beginners and one you enjoyed recently?
If you want to learn more about exploring chemical space I would recommend looking at this article:
- Digitizing chemical discovery with a Bayesian explorer for interpreting reactivity data,
S. Hessam M. Mehr, Dario Caramelli, Leroy Cronin,
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A 2023, 120, e2220045120.
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2220045120
Is there anything else you would like to share with readers of ChemistryViews?
In our quest to digitize chemistry we have been developing a tool to convert the literature safely to code for running in automation that avoids LLMs [large language models] which are error-prone. See http://www.syn-txt.com/
Thank you very much for the insights.
back to the overview “Opinions on AI & Chemistry”
