[hashimotonomora]

Experienced chemists can look at molecule diagrams and have an intuition as to its activity and similarity to other known molecules. It’s like most of science and math: most discoveries begin with intuition and are demonstrated rigorously afterwards. I believe Poincare said something to this end.

[amelius]

Ok, so these experienced chemists can be replaced by AI now?

[aemoron]

In the same way radiologist can be replaced by AI. So, no.

[amelius]

Radiologists have a high responsibility of detecting the right things.

Chemists can just try out things.

I don't think you can compare the two.

[aemoron]

I was implying that you still need a human to make the final decision. AI can be a valuable aid in both fields. Doctors can't just let the AI do all the work in the same way synthetic chemists can't blindly trust the AI to spit out correct and feasible results. Research time is expensive and thus the effort needs to be evaluated, and usually the intuition of said chemists trump that of the AI.

[amelius]

True. But perhaps you can eliminate 9 out of 10 chemists, and replace them by an AI that generates ideas. Then use the 1 chemist to validate those ideas.

[fuzzfactor]

And that's why I want to build me a robot.

Not to generate ideas, there's always more ideas than resources in chemistry.

Mainly to do more automated routines than ever.

9 out of 10 chemists aren't that great at the bench anyway.

Everyone would probably benefit from getting them in front of a computer full-time to leverage their training in a way, and freeing up the bench space to those who can really make the most of it.

[fuzzfactor]

Not the focus of the article, but analytical chemists need to do a lot of proper detecting themselves to be high-performing just like the radiologists do.