Swedish researchers create an ‘AI scientist’ that designs and runs its own experiments

Researchers in Sweden have developed an AI scientist capable of generating scientific hypotheses, designing experiments and interpreting results. The team combined multiple Large Language Models (LLMs), large databases and physical laboratory robotics into a closed-loop system that can run the full cycle of scientific discovery.“It is too much information for a human to analyse, but our AI scientist could identify promising biological questions, recommend experiments to test them, evaluate experimental outcomes and iteratively refine its understanding based on new evidence,” said Ievgeniia Tiukova, a researcher at Chalmers University of Technology, and one of the authors of the new study that examined the AI scientist. The AI scientist analysed a database of approximately 60,000 phenotypical, physiological and metabolic relations for S. cerevisiae — a species of yeast also called brewer’s yeast or baker’s yeast.