🦠 AI solved research puzzle about resistant bacteria in two days, which had taken researchers ten years

• Researchers at Imperial College London received help from Google's AI tool "co-scientist" to solve a complex problem about antibiotic resistance in just two days.
• The AI tool reached the same conclusion that the research team had been working on for ten years, despite the research not being published.
• The tool also provided additional hypotheses that researchers are now investigating, demonstrating its potential in scientific research.

Ten years of research solved in 48 hours

Professor José R Penadés and his team at Imperial College London had spent a decade investigating and proving why certain superbugs are immune to antibiotics.

The researchers have been trying to find out how certain superbugs – dangerous bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics – are formed. Their hypothesis is that the superbugs can form a tail from different viruses that allows them to spread between species. Professor Penadés likened it to the superbugs having "keys" that enable them to move from home to home, or from host species to host species. This hypothesis was unique to the research team and had not been published anywhere else.

When the professor gave the AI tool "co-scientist," developed by Google, a short question about the core problem he was investigating, it reached the same conclusion in just 48 hours.

Penadés described his surprise when he discovered the result, especially since his research wasn't published and therefore couldn't have been found by the AI system in public sources.

"I was shopping with somebody and said: 'please leave me alone for an hour, I need to digest this thing,'" he told BBC's Today program. He also contacted Google to ask if they had access to his computer, which the company confirmed they did not.

Valuable new insights

It's worth noting that the decade the scientists spent on the project included the time it took to prove the research, which itself was several years. But they say that if they had had the hypothesis from the start, it would have saved years of work.

Professor Penadés pointed out that the tool actually did more than successfully replicate his research: "It's not just that the top hypothesis they provide was the right one. It's that they provide another four, and all of them made sense. And for one of them, we never thought about it, and we're now working on that."

The future of scientific research

According to Professor Penadés, he understands why many first worry about the impact on jobs like his, but adds: "when you think about it, it's more that you have an extremely powerful tool."

He said that the researchers on the project are convinced that it will be very useful in the future. "I feel this will change science," said Penadés. "I'm in front of something that is spectacular, and I'm very happy to be part of that."

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