AI delivering real-world scientific outcomes: Google DeepMind exec

Pushmeet Kohli, vice-president of research at Google DeepMind, believes artificial intelligence (AI) and science can finally address some of the world’s biggest problems. In a video interview with Shivani Shinde, before he heads to India for the AI Impact Summit, Kohli discusses AI’s role in science, India’s place in global research, and DeepMind’s footprint in the country. Edited excerpts:

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Pushmeet Kohli, vice-president of research at Google DeepMind, believes artificial intelligence (AI) and science can finally address some of the world’s biggest problems. In a video interview with Shivani Shinde, before he heads to India for the AI Impact Summit, Kohli discusses AI’s role in science, India’s place in global research, and DeepMind’s footprint in the country. Edited excerpts:

The buzz around AI is largely about large language models (LLMs). How do you see AI impacting science and everyday life?

When we talk about AI, there’s an important distinction to make: AI takes many forms, just as intelligence itself exists at multiple levels. There is common intelligence, which all of us possess. Then there is expert-level intelligence. Beyond that is what we can call superhuman intelligence.

A good example is the protein-folding problem. Given a sequence of amino acids that makes up a protein, can you predict its three-dimensional structure? This is an extraordinarily important problem. If you understand the shape and function of proteins, you can understand diseases, design drugs, build vaccines, and even engineer enzymes — for example, to decompose plastics. Yet no human has been able to solve this problem.