GPT-5.4 reviewed scientific literature, generated and ranked research proposals, helped design experiments, analyzed results, and proposed follow-up studies.
Human chemists steered the work, selected proposals for testing, and validated the final result.
Maria [AI] tested the idea across 10,080 reactions, and human chemists later validated representative results by hand.
Under the optimized conditions, yields improved for 88% of the boronic acids and 83% of the sulfonamides tested.
Human chemists then repeated 14 representative reactions by hand: 11 showed higher yields, including 8 with a more than twofold improvement.
The full process took about 2.5 months, plus another half month for human chemists to write up the results.
It's basically high through put screening plus an AI engine to map out the "variable space".
Back in 1990 when robotics became more reliable we did the same thing. The only difference is a trained chemist would determine what variables would be altered.
It's not that hard to do, it doesn't take that much brain power, just an understanding of what variables may impact the yield. Claiming AI can now do this isn't all that impressive.
It could be as unimpressive as motorcycling across the USA in 33 hours vs 7 days
It made me wonder what other professions require an associate's degree or better to be able to claim the profession without some sort of modifier, such as licensed physician, or Master plumber...