Artificial intelligence to win the Nobel Prize and beyond: Creating the engine for scientific discovery

Abstract

This article proposes a new grand challenge for AI: to develop an AI system that can make major scientific discoveries in biomedical sciences and that is worthy of a Nobel Prize. There are a series of human cognitive limitations that prevent us from making accelerated scientific discoveries, particularity in biomedical sciences. As a result, scien-tific discoveries are left at the level of a cottage industry. AI systems can transform scientific discoveries into highly efficient practices, thereby enabling us to expand our knowledge in unprecedented ways. Such systems may outcompute all possible hypotheses and may redefine the nature of scientific intuition, hence the scientific discovery process.