DISCOVERY LOOP: new start-up by Google engineers plan to use AI to automate scientific discovery

ME/CFS Science Blog

Senior Member (Voting Rights)
From their website:
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The scientific method is one of the greatest tools humanity has ever devised, yet execution entails repetitive experimental loops that are hard to scale with today's manual efforts: you propose an experiment, implement and run it, examine the results, then iterate to refine your approach.

Historically, scientific progress has relied on these sequential human iterations. In many domains, this process remains incredibly slow and labor-intensive.

At Discovery Loop, we are building systems to automate these entire experimental loops. By utilizing frontier AI models and large-scale computational infrastructure, our systems will be able to rapidly propose, run, and learn from evaluations.

This approach allows for the parallel execution of thousands of experiments, drastically compressing iteration time and driving up the quantity and quality of scientific and engineering output.

We will initially focus on automating the process of machine learning research and engineering.

We will use these automated ML capabilities to rapidly optimize our own technology stack before expanding to other domains.

We believe our approach will be able to solve any learning loop with measurable outcomes within the domains of science and engineering. Ultimately, we are building systems capable of taking on National Academy of Engineering (NAE) Grand Challenges—such as engineering better medicines, advancing health informatics, making solar energy economical, providing access to clean water, securing cyberspace, and engineering the tools of scientific discovery.

Includes a lot of big names from Google. Hope it will help to accelerate scientific research.

Here's the announcement on Twitter:
 
This approach allows for the parallel execution of thousands of experiments, drastically compressing iteration time and driving up the quantity and quality of scientific and engineering output.
Assuming you can do everything inside a compute chip, of course, and you have a way of determining if you’re on the right path.
 
Assuming you can do everything inside a compute chip,
Not necessarily. Think of alloy R&D: build a device that allows the computer to add precise quantities of metal powders, melt (controlled heating and cooling rates), then the tiny alloy bar goes to a controlled testing station to measure properties. The AI could process each sample within minutes, and adjust the next sample based on the results. It could probably do in days what would otherwise take decades, and at a fraction of the cost. That will allow research that wouldn't otherwise get funding.

That should apply to biochemical and biological R&D too. Tiny samples, tiny processors that can be fabricated like ICs, able to run hundreds of tests simultaneously. Place a few cloned cells in each processor, add variations of a drug to each one, and you can find problems right away, or find the optimum dosage for further testing. That won't apply to every aspect of R&D, but it can certainly speed up some aspects.

This applies to research that can't be simulated. Simulations can be a first step, or part of the feedback loop with real-life testing. Adding copper gives a different result than the simulation predicted? Adapt the simulation.
 
I don’t think this will immediately apply to bio. This is more machines training machines similar to:


I think the main idea if AI teaches AI you can get the exponential break away that’s be talked about as AGI or ASI.

Most biotechs already run versions of high throughput screening in recursive loops. Its target discovery that’s lacking in my opinion and most of that comes from University research which unfortunately is getting axed by the current admin.

I do however believe you will get a lot of startups in the next few years that advertise “lights off” automation for biotech.

Gingko already did this:

However if you really read the Gingko paper this older model couldn’t beat human discovery until it could google the newest techniques. Again though this was an older model so I wonder if you threw a newer model in the mix how it’d go now. Things change fast. Everyone I know hardly codes anymore, we’re just architects.
 
Not necessarily. Think of alloy R&D: build a device that allows the computer to add precise quantities of metal powders, melt (controlled heating and cooling rates), then the tiny alloy bar goes to a controlled testing station to measure properties. The AI could process each sample within minutes, and adjust the next sample based on the results. It could probably do in days what would otherwise take decades, and at a fraction of the cost. That will allow research that wouldn't otherwise get funding.
That should apply to biochemical and biological R&D too. Tiny samples, tiny processors that can be fabricated like ICs, able to run hundreds of tests simultaneously. Place a few cloned cells in each processor, add variations of a drug to each one, and you can find problems right away, or find the optimum dosage for further testing. That won't apply to every aspect of R&D, but it can certainly speed up some aspects.
We already have automated lab equipment, you don’t need AI to run it or to evaluate the results.
 
No, some other more established company or even their old employer paid them more money.
:)
No they started their own spin off, which breaks confidence in googles over all AI vision. No one’s paying more than Google for Jeff dean, his equity at Google is more than anything anyone could offer. Insane re-order at Google, stock dropped due to this. they essentially invented the GPT LLMs (attention is all you need paper) and are seemingly once again in last.

Demis Hassabis founder of deep mind, alpha fold, also stepped down as CEO. This probably has a bigger impact for biology…
 
No they started their own spin off, which breaks confidence in googles over all AI vision. No one’s paying more than Google for Jeff dean, his equity at Google is more than anything anyone could offer. Insane re-order at Google, stock dropped due to this. they essentially invented the GPT LLMs (attention is all you need paper) and are seemingly once again in last.

Demis Hassabis founder of deep mind, alpha fold, also stepped down as CEO. This probably has a bigger impact for biology…
You clearly know more than I!
 
We already have automated lab equipment, you don’t need AI to run it or to evaluate the results.
Yes, but this year's automated equipment is more capable than last year's. Adding AI is just improved automation. It can run experiments that are too boring for humans to run, or too boring to look for correlations in. Also, you can set your automated equipment to run a test on 50,000 samples and then evaluate the results, but the AI can adjust the test after 317 samples by evaluating the results as they come. It might even contact other researchers (AI or human) partway through the test. You could get the same results without AI, but with AI it will probably be faster and cheaper.

Researchers did research before automated lab equipment, so they didn't need the automation, but how would progress have been without it?
 
Yes, but this year's automated equipment is more capable than last year's. Adding AI is just improved automation. It can run experiments that are too boring for humans to run, or too boring to look for correlations in. Also, you can set your automated equipment to run a test on 50,000 samples and then evaluate the results, but the AI can adjust the test after 317 samples by evaluating the results as they come. It might even contact other researchers (AI or human) partway through the test. You could get the same results without AI, but with AI it will probably be faster and cheaper.

Researchers did research before automated lab equipment, so they didn't need the automation, but how would progress have been without it?
Lab automation equipment is decades behind other robotic fields, trust me I’ve worked in it. It’s a joke compared to real automation manufacturing. In that ChatGPT + Gingko paper, Gingko replaced all transfer steps of plates with 6-axis robotic arms solely because the lab automation equipment that moved plates is so unreliable, poorly designed SCARA arms. It’s not getting 10x better year after year, it’s regulated and insanely behind the times.

Boring results are not a rate limiting factor. No one doesn’t run an assay cause they are boring, it’s experimental setup and design, then overhead of reagents and equipment. Programming used to be a bottleneck but in the last year that has changed. You’re more bottle necked by physical world issues, dispenses, timing, resource usage, anything that lives in the physical world etc. Every big biotech already does what you’re suggesting if they are screening in a high throughput fashion.

Throughput of experiments and screening is already automated at extremely high levels. Most biotechs run fully automated already, at least the bigger ones, with lots of AI (not LLM) checks balances already.

The real gain with an AI “scientist” is if it can design the experiment, model the equipment needed, then program the assay. I’d say this is a decade out due to the physical world issue but there’s about 10-15 companies, including Google moonshot factory attempting this.
 
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Yes, but this year's automated equipment is more capable than last year's. Adding AI is just improved automation. It can run experiments that are too boring for humans to run, or too boring to look for correlations in. Also, you can set your automated equipment to run a test on 50,000 samples and then evaluate the results, but the AI can adjust the test after 317 samples by evaluating the results as they come. It might even contact other researchers (AI or human) partway through the test. You could get the same results without AI, but with AI it will probably be faster and cheaper.

Researchers did research before automated lab equipment, so they didn't need the automation, but how would progress have been without it?
It seems like it’s not really cost efficient yet, at least according to this paper:

I have no doubt we’ll get there at some point, but right now it looks more like how LLM’s are being used: the non-programmers use it to convert PDFs to PPTs instead of using off the shelf solutions at a fraction of the cost.
 
However it would be interesting in this new age of “abundance” to see if any of this AI labs trickles down to the academic level, where right now they mainly waste PHD students time with pipetting…. Why buy and program a robot when a PHD student can do the same for cheaper as well as research
What I hear from friends in academia is that there is non-negligible resistance to AI where PIs and heads of this and that are trying to push for AI (where my friends work). I think it might bite young people who will move out of academia one day. I'm talking about people with computational jobs whose pals in the private sector use AI daily, most of the day.
 
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