this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2026
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Logical fallacy. Just because I rebutted the assertion that no one asked for the internet, does not mean I support the assertion it was being used to rebut (that no one asked for AI).
The internet was absolutely desired and wanted and actively built by thousands of hands in academia as well as privately, it didn't need to be pushed by corporate interests.
I'm happy to accept that the chemistry research industry wanted AI, I have zero knowledge of it, the question I have is whether this LLM monstrosity is what you had in mind ? I did see an LLM came up with a design (is that the right word ?) for a bacteriophage - is it doing positive things for you guys ? Or is it causing as much confusion as it does value like it does in IT ?
What I'm saying is that also LLMs grew organically. Machine learning developed organically through the years and LLMs are one of the products of such development.
Machine learning algorithms were absolutely desired and wanted, hundreds of thousands of people worked on developing them. It is a very useful technology. If I may list one very useful development: AlphaFold, for which the 2024 Nobel prize was adjudicated.
Now, whether LLMs are useful in chemistry and biology: kind of. Coming up with the design of a bacteriophage is not the first use which would come to my mind. Of course LLMs are being tested for their applications in such domains, but results are in general worse than dedicated models. One area in which I see value is the use of agents in orchestrating tools and analyzing results. Not really in producing new things on their own.