For a long time, chemical discoveries arose from a combination of experience, intuition, and lucky chance—many groundbreaking materials or drugs were discovered rather than deliberately developed. Artificial intelligence is fundamentally changing this process: It can analyze vast amounts of data, predict the properties of molecules, and even suggest which substances are worth synthesizing.
What used to take years can now sometimes be reduced to a matter of weeks. But this transformation also raises questions: What does it mean for research when machines contribute to the thinking process? How is the role of scientists changing? And what are the limits of what algorithms can achieve?
This lecture traces the path by which chemistry has evolved from a field full of serendipitous discoveries into an increasingly systematic, data-driven science—and what that means for the future of research and innovation.
No future events in this series.