Automating Scientific Discovery, with Andrew White, Head of Science at Future House

"The Cognitive Revolution" | AI Builders, Researchers, and Live Player Analysis

In this episode of The Cognitive Revolution, Nathan interviews Andrew White, Professor of Chemical Engineering at the University of Rochester and Head of Science at Future House. We explore groundbreaking AI systems for scientific discovery, including PaperQA and Aviary, and discuss how large language models are transforming research. Join us for an insightful conversation about the intersection of AI and scientific advancement with this pioneering researcher in his first-ever podcast appearance.

Check out Future House: https://www.futurehouse.org

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SPONSORS:

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CHAPTERS:

(00:00:00) Teaser

(00:01:13) About the Episode

(00:04:37) Andrew White's Journey

(00:10:23) GPT-4 Red Team

(00:15:33) GPT-4 & Chemistry

(00:17:54) Sponsors: Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) | SelectQuote

(00:20:19) Biology vs Physics

(00:23:14) Conceptual Dark Matter

(00:26:27) Future House Intro

(00:30:42) Semi-Autonomous AI

(00:35:39) Sponsors: Shopify

(00:37:00) Lab Automation

(00:39:46) In Silico Experiments

(00:45:22) Cost of Experiments

(00:51:30) Multi-Omic Models

(00:54:54) Scale and Grokking

(01:00:53) Future House Projects

(01:10:42) Paper QA Insights

(01:16:28) Generalizing to Other Domains

(01:17:57) Using Figures Effectively

(01:22:01) Need for Specialized Tools

(01:24:23) Paper QA Cost & Latency

(01:27:37) Aviary: Agents & Environments

(01:31:42) Black Box Gradient Estimation

(01:36:14) Open vs Closed Models

(01:37:52) Improvement with Training

(01:40:00) Runtime Choice & Q-Learning

(01:43:43) Narrow vs General AI

(01:48:22) Future Directions & Needs

(01:53:22) Future House: What's Next?

(01:55:32) Outro

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