SWELL A.I. PRIDE : GLOBAL HONOURS ESSAY

 

Starting in the late 19th century - the establishment of '' research laboratories, '' which brought together ideas, people and materials on an industrial scale, gave rise to further innovations such as artificial fertiliser, pharmaceuticals and the transistor, the building block of the computer.

From the mid-20th century, computers in turn enabled new forms of science based simulation and modeling, from the design of weapons and  aircraft to more accurate weather forecasting.

And the computer revolution may not be finished yet. AI tools and techniques are now being applied in almost every field of science, though the degree of adoption varied widely : 

7.2% of physics and astronomy papers published in 2022 involved AI, for example compared with 1.4% in veterinary science. AI is being employed in many ways.

It can identify promising candidates for analysis, such as molecules with particular properties in drug discovery, or materials with the characteristic needed in batteries and solar cells.

It can sift through piles of data such as those produced by particle colliders or robotic telescopes, looking for patterns.

And AI can model and analyse even more complex systems, such as the folding of proteins and the formation of galaxies. AI tools have been used to identify new antibiotics, reveal the Higgs boson and spot regional accents in wolves, among other things.

All this is to be welcomed. But the journal and the laboratory went further still : they altered scientific practice itself and locked more powerful means of making discoveries, by allowing people and ideas to mingle in new ways and on larger scale.

AI, too, has the potential to set off such a transformation and on a mass scale. The World Students Society has only to take up this challenge.

The Master Essay Publishing continues. The World Students Society thanks The Economist.