Nobel for AI: A matter of time?

 Devangshu Datta : Can Artificial Intelligence be awarded the Nobel Prize for key scientific research?

This is a question which is becoming more serious in coming days. In 2022 we have seen atleast 2 AI driven pieces of research, which could win the most prestigious award in science.

In february 2022 Deepmind, the British Ai research outfit, was asked to help look at a critical problem in nuclear fusion. Nuclear fusion is the process which occurs in the Sun and the stars giving out energy. We find it extremely hard to replicate the process here due to extreme temperature and pressure. 

Tokamak chambers which were designed to conduct nuclear fusion using magnetic manipulation. Strong elctromagnetic fields keep the plasma away from touching the chamber walls. It was difficult to run the magnets efficiently at the same time squeezing the plasma to yield maximum fusion. Deepmind's AI has worked out far more efficient ways to shape the fields and hold the plasma than any prior research.

Other field of research using AI was protein folding which is a very complex mathematical problem.  Protein consist of 300 amino acids strung together in various methods. The folding determines the biochemical reactions. Understanding how protein is folded or likely to be folded is important. 

Circa 2018, Deepminds Alphafold algorith started working on protein folding. It beat every other protein guessing platform in the Critical assessment of protein structure prediction. In 2021, Deepmind released a compendium of the structures of 200 million proteins. This is a huge step forward and could bring untold future benefits. 

Any human who have figured these two researches would have been a recepient of Nobel Prizes. So it is still questionable that can the AI's can be awarded science awards.