Google has built an artificial intelligence laboratory assistant to help scientists accelerate biomedical research, as companies race to create specialised applications from the cutting-edge technology. The US tech group’s so-called co-scientist tool helps researchers identify gaps in their knowledge and propose new ideas that could speed up scientific discovery. “What we’re trying to do with our project is see whether technology like the AI co-scientist can give these researchers superpowers,” said Alan Karthikesalingam, a senior staff clinician scientist at Google. Google’s new tool comes as tech companies are spending billions of dollars on AI models and products, believing the technology can change industries from healthcare to energy and education. OpenAI, Perplexity and German drugmaker BioNTech and its London-based AI subsidiary InstaDeep have recently launched their own AI research tools, while Google DeepMind’s AlphaFold has shown how the fast-developing technology can accelerate scientific research. Early tests of Google’s new tool with experts from Stanford University, Imperial College London and Houston Methodist hospital found it was able to generate scientific hypotheses that showed promising results.

Full story : Google launches an AI co-scientist, a new Gemini 2.0-based system to help scientists create novel hypotheses and research plans, available to select testers.