New Delhi: While the general consensus on AI “hallucinations” (the generation of plausible but false information) is worrying, scientists increasingly recognize its potential to drive innovation and discovery, a report says, adding That these unexpected results from AI models are proving surprisingly useful in fields ranging from medicine to climate science.
According to a New York Times report, AI hallucinationsor inaccurate or misleading results can generate new ideas and speed up the scientific process. AI hallucinations arise when generative models They are trained on a specific topic and then allowed to rework that information, sometimes producing unexpected and even surreal results.
“The public thinks everything is bad. But it’s actually giving scientists new ideas. It’s giving them the opportunity to explore ideas they otherwise wouldn’t have thought about,” said Amy McGovern, a computer scientist and director of a federal AI institute.
AI hallucinations accelerate hypotheses
According to scientists, this “creative aspect” of AI is valuable, especially in the early stages of life. scientific discoverywhere hunches and guesses often play a crucial role. AI hallucinations can speed up the hypothesis generation and testing process, leading to faster breakthroughs.
James J. Collins, a professor at MIT, recently praised AI hallucinations for accelerating his research on new antibiotics.
“We are exploring. “We are asking the models to generate completely new molecules,” he said.
The impact of AI hallucinations is evident in the work of the Nobel Prize winner David Bakerwho shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research on proteins. Baker credited AI hallucinations with helping his lab engineer millions of new proteins not found in nature, leading to numerous patents and the founding of more than 20 biotechnology companies.
