MacArthur Genius Award winner Phil Baran: AI makes chemical synthesis lose its soul

The Paper's reporter Wang Jingjing

"AI will make chemical synthesis research lose its soul." The combination of chemical synthesis and artificial intelligence is not as easy as imagined, and to some extent, the soul of chemical synthesis lies precisely in its unpredictability.

On November 1, Professor Phil S. BARAN, winner of the 2013 MacArthur Genius Award, answered the question "Whether there will be 'AI chemists' in chemistry in the context of artificial intelligence" at the "Fourth World's Top Scientists in Chemical Synthesis" forum.

"The biggest problem is that synthetic chemistry is not as stable as predicting rocket launch orbits, transistor designs, or circuit designs, and the substrates of certain chemical reactions have many strange habits that hinder the success of intelligent research," Baran said. "AI can't discern key points in chemical synthesis and solve them. Baraan predicts that there is still a long way to go before computers are able to invent new rules and new reactions to make real changes.

Compared with the field of chemistry, Baran is more looking forward to the fusion of artificial intelligence and people, "Imagine how creative it is to have a USB interface behind a human brain, to interact with a large computer in the sky, and to have Google Scholar built into the human brain." ”

At the forum, Baran also shared the research projects he participated in launching. That is, the ElectroSyn instrument was developed based on synthetic organic chemistry to generate new waveforms, namely rapid alternating polarity. This represents a new chemical selectivity, a new discovery that cannot be achieved as a whole by the currently known scientific method or other electrochemical methods, which shortens the experimental process from nine steps to two steps and is applied to emerging fields such as protein degradation.

Baran is a recognized star in the global organic synthesis community, focusing on the total synthesis of natural products, known for designing and synthesizing complex natural product molecules through simpler steps and developing related methodological research. His team has completed some very valuable synthesis of natural products, such as the first total synthesis of natural products Paleu'amine and Vinigrol, the semi-synthesis of the high oxidative steroid compound Ouabagenin, and the successful 14-step synthesis of Ingenol and 19-step synthesis of Phorbol.

Editor-in-Charge: Li Yuequn

Proofreader: Yan Zhang