Artificial intelligence is transforming science and healthcare rapidly

Source: The post Artificial intelligence is transforming science and healthcare rapidly has been created, based on the article “We should prepare for a world of ever-improving super-Einsteins” published in “Live Mint” on 27 May 2025. Artificial intelligence is transforming science and healthcare rapidly

UPSC Syllabus Topic: GS Paper3- Awareness in the fields of IT, Space, Computers, robotics, nano-technology, bio-technology

Context: The article explains how artificial intelligence (AI) is evolving rapidly—from chatbots to superintelligent systems. It highlights the growing role of AI beyond digital tools and shows how it is already transforming healthcare, scientific research, and drug discovery. This shift demands urgent attention from institutions and society.

Evolution of AI Across Four Stages

1. From Chatbots to Action Agents: The early 2020s began with chatbots—clever but basic. These soon gave way to agentic systems that perform tasks like booking flights, editing images, and managing spreadsheets.
2. Emergence of Embodied Intelligence: Next comes AI embedded in the physical world—robots, smart tools, and adaptive systems. These machines will learn and act by interacting with their environment.
3. Rise of Cognitive Supremacy: A future stage will bring superintelligent systems that outperform even the most brilliant human minds in all fields. Some models already match Olympiad-level students in mathematics.
4. Endless Scaling and Improvement: These systems will scale endlessly, becoming faster, better, and more capable without hitting a performance ceiling.

Healthcare as the First Frontier

1. AI Outperforms Human Experts: In diagnostics, AI now outperforms radiologists in reading X-rays, cancer scans, and other medical images. The improvements are leaps in accuracy, speed, and scale.
2. Cognitive Strength in Real Use: These systems show that AI can reason through complexity, solving tasks once limited to specialists.
3. Decisions in Seconds, Not Days: AI makes medical decisions in seconds, while humans need days or weeks. It is tackling complex problems directly and efficiently.
4. The Real Transformation Has Begun: While public attention stays on robots and gadgets, diagnostics marks AI’s real impact—a turning point in applied intelligence.

AI-Led Drug Discovery Revolution

1. Creative Intelligence in Action: Drug discovery goes beyond pattern detection. It requires AI to imagine solutions, design molecules, and test ideasthrough simulations.
2. Freedom from Human Frameworks: Traditional biology used simplified models suited to human limits. AI operates in vast molecular and mechanistic spaces, beyond such constraints.
3. Powerful New Tools: Platforms like Absci’s zero-shot antibody generators and Recursion’s phenomics system create viable drug candidates and screen compounds at scale—without needing prior data.
4. Expanding What Science Can Do: AI lets science explore more questions, test more ideas, and navigate massive solution spaces that were previously unreachable.

A Deeper Scientific Revolution Unfolds

1. Rapid Progress in Synthetic Biology: AI now helps design gene circuits that work on the first attempt. Whole-cell simulations are becoming feasible.
2. Prediction Without Experimentation: AI models now predict binding affinity, stability, and biological effects without lab trials or training data.
3. From Linear to Exponential Growth: Each breakthrough fuels another. Science is shifting from a step-by-step process to an exponential transformation.

Reframing the Public Discourse

1. Beyond Entertaining AI Feats: Public focus is still on AI composing emails or jingles, but these are outdated examples.
2. Birth of Non-Human Minds: We are now creating new kinds of minds. These systems won’t just assist—they will co-create knowledge using alien and powerful reasoning.
3. Unanswered Ethical Questions: There are rising concerns about ethics, accountability, and AI governance. These issues need urgent attention, though this article only flags them.
4. Preparing for the True AI Era: The real change isn’t about digital assistants. It’s about minds we barely understand, already reshaping science, society, and the future.

Question for practice:

Discuss how artificial intelligence is reshaping science and healthcare, according to the article.