Artificial Intelligence Conquers Science: Nobel Prize for Groundbreaking Discoveries

In a remarkable turn of events, Sir Demis Hassabis was informed by his wife that he had won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. As co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind, Google's AI division, Hassabis shared the award with his colleague John Jumper and American biochemist David Baker. The prize was awarded for solving a 50-year-old puzzle in biology: predicting the structure of every human-known protein using the AI software AlphaFold. Hassabis, whose team is currently working on six drug development programs with pharmaceutical companies Eli Lilly and Novartis, has ambitious plans to extend the application of AI to climate modeling and healthcare. Within the next two years, he expects a drug candidate to enter clinical trials. At the same time, he aims to achieve AI that can match human intelligence with his research. In parallel with the recognition of DeepMind, Geoffrey Hinton and John Hopfield also received the Nobel Prize in Physics for their work on neural networks. This technology forms the backbone of modern AI systems, which are applied in fields such as healthcare and autonomous driving. The recognition of the two teams emphasizes the growing importance of computational tools and data sciences in solving complex scientific challenges. Despite the enormous potential, AI remains a tool that complements rather than replaces human creativity. Hassabis emphasizes that the technology cannot replace the human capacity for hypothesis formation and research. The use of AI remains an example of the possibilities that new technological developments offer to science.