AI Transforms Scientific Discovery: How AlphaFold and AI Co-Scientist Are Reshaping Research
For decades, scientific productivity has struggled despite increasing funding and larger research teams. Papers became more incremental, experimental projects stretched for years, and the cost of acquiring new data kept rising. A single protein structure determination could require an entire PhD program and hundreds of thousands of dollars. That narrative changed dramatically in late 2024 when Demis Hassabis and John Jumper received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work on AlphaFold. This recognition marked a pivotal moment: an AI system had decoded protein structures at atomic accuracy, compressing what once took years into mere minutes. ...