Of the things you ought to be excited about when it comes to AI (other than AI-powered singing fish with the voice of Arnold Schwarzenegger), it is scientific discovery. Lila, a Cambridge, MA-based startup, with $200M in initial funding, just came out of stealth and showed their creation:

"A.I. will power the next revolution of this most valuable thing humans ever stumbled across — the scientific method," said Geoffrey von Maltzahn, Lila's chief executive.

Link to article.

A lot of excitement exists around the use of tailored AI models to do things such as drug discovery and the development of new materials. It turns out that Ethan Mollick’s Jagged Frontier of the use and application of AI applies here too. As Matt Clancy points out in his deep dive "Prediction Technologies and Innovation”:

We can imagine Kim (2023)’s technology is like a lonely streetlight, only illuminating protein structures that are near to others we already know, while Toner-Rodgers’ technology is a gigantic set of floodlights that illuminate a whole field.

In summary, the streetlight effect leads to a concentration of research efforts on well-trodden paths, while the floodlight effect can promote exploration of more novel and diverse areas. Thus, the former leads to sustaining innovation (at best), while the latter can lead to breakthrough innovation.

Link to article.

Wondering what AI could actually be useful for (other than creating funny images and spellchecking this blog post)?

In a large-scale study in Germany, researchers found that AI-assisted breast cancer screening yielded vastly better results than the non-AI control group:

[…] after taking into account factors such as age of the women and the radiologists involved, the researchers found this difference increased, with the rate 17.6% higher for the AI group at 6.70 per 1,000 women compared with 5.70 per 1,000 women for the standard group. In other words, one additional case of cancer was spotted per 1,000 women screened when AI was used.

Link to article and study.