A researcher has just finished writing a scientific paper. She knows her work could benefit from another perspective. Did she overlook something? Or perhaps there’s an application of her research she hadn’t thought of. A second set of eyes would be great, but even the friendliest of collaborators might not be able to spare the time to read all the required background publications to catch up.
Rapid advances in AI and ML have given way to programs that can generate creative text and useful software code. These general-purpose chatbots have recently captured the public imagination. Existing chatbots—based on large, diverse language models—lack detailed knowledge of scientific sub-domains.
By leveraging a document-retrieval method, Yager’s bot is knowledgeable in areas of nanomaterial science that other bots are not. The details of this project and how other scientists can leverage this AI colleague for their own work have recently been published in Digital Discovery.
Rise of the robots
“CFN has been looking into new ways to leverage AI/ML to accelerate nanomaterial discovery for a long time. Currently, it’s helping us quickly identify, catalog, and choose samples, automate experiments, control equipment, and discover new materials. Esther Tsai, a scientist in the electronic nanomaterials group at CFN, is developing an AI companion to help speed up materials research experiments at the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II).” NSLS-II is another DOE Office of Science User Facility at Brookhaven Lab.
At CFN, there has been a lot of work on AI/ML that can help drive experiments through the use of automation, controls, robotics, and analysis, but having a program that was adept with scientific text was something that researchers hadn’t explored as deeply. Being able to quickly document, understand, and convey information about an experiment can help in a number of ways—from breaking down language barriers to saving time by summarizing larger pieces of work.
Watching your language
To build a specialized chatbot, the program required domain-specific text—language taken from areas the bot is intended to focus on. In this case, the text is scientific publications. Domain-specific text helps the AI model understand new terminology and definitions and introduces it to frontier scientific concepts. Most importantly, this curated set of documents enables the AI model to ground its reasoning using trusted facts.
To emulate natural human language, AI models are trained on existing text, enabling them to learn the structure of language, memorize various facts, and develop a primitive sort of reasoning. Rather than laboriously retrain the AI model on nanoscience text, Yager gave it the ability to look up relevant information in a curated set of publications. Providing it with a library of relevant data was only half of the battle. To use this text accurately and effectively, the bot would need a way to decipher the correct context.
“A challenge that’s common with language models is that sometimes they ‘hallucinate’ plausible sounding but untrue things,” explained Yager. “This has been a core issue to resolve for a chatbot used in research as opposed to one doing something like writing poetry. We don’t want it to fabricate facts or citations. This needed to be addressed. The solution for this was something we call ’embedding,’ a way of categorizing and linking information quickly behind the scenes.”
Embedding is a process that transforms words and phrases into numerical values. The resulting “embedding vector” quantifies the meaning of the text. When a user asks the chatbot a question, it’s also sent to the ML embedding model to calculate its vector value. This vector is used to search through a pre-computed database of text chunks from scientific papers that were similarly embedded. The bot then uses text snippets it finds that are semantically related to the question to get a more complete understanding of the context.
The user’s query and the text snippets are combined into a “prompt” that is sent to a large language model, an expansive program that creates text modeled on natural human language, that generates the final response. The embedding ensures that the text being pulled is relevant in the context of the user’s question. By providing text chunks from the body of trusted documents, the chatbot generates answers that are factual and sourced.
“The program needs to be like a reference librarian,” said Yager. “It needs to heavily rely on the documents to provide sourced answers. It needs to be able to accurately interpret what people are asking and be able to effectively piece together the context of those questions to retrieve the most relevant information. While the responses may not be perfect yet, it’s already able to answer challenging questions and trigger some interesting thoughts while planning new projects and research.”
Bots empowering humans
CFN is developing AI/ML systems as tools that can liberate human researchers to work on more challenging and interesting problems and to get more out of their limited time while computers automate repetitive tasks in the background. There are still many unknowns about this new way of working, but these questions are the start of important discussions scientists are having right now to ensure AI/ML use is safe and ethical.
“There are a number of tasks that a domain-specific chatbot like this could clear from a scientist’s workload. Classifying and organizing documents, summarizing publications, pointing out relevant info, and getting up to speed in a new topical area are just a few potential applications,” remarked Yager. “I’m excited to see where all of this will go, though. We never could have imagined where we are now three years ago, and I’m looking forward to where we’ll be three years from now.”
For researchers interested in trying this software out for themselves, the source code for CFN’s chatbot and associated tools can be found in this GitHub repository.
More information: Kevin G. Yager, Domain-specific chatbots for science using embeddings, Digital Discovery (2023). DOI: 10.1039/D3DD00112A
News
Ebola kills over 5,300 in fastest-growing outbreak on record
Africa’s latest Ebola outbreak has killed nearly 5,400 people, the vast majority of them in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), according to the continent’s top health agency. Africa Centres for Disease Control and [...]
China makes early progress in using sound waves to stimulate damaged brains
Chinese researchers are testing whether focused ultrasound can help restore consciousness in patients with severe brain injuries, adding to a growing international effort to use sound waves to stimulate deep brain structures without surgery. [...]
Micro-drones fly through the body thanks to ultrasound
At the EPFL, micro-drones have been developed that can be moved without a motor or battery.No motors, no batteries, no electronics on board, just small cavities that convert sound waves into thrust: this is [...]
A Single Enzyme Could Hold the Key to Treating a Devastating Brain Disorder
Blocking an enzyme’s production restored brain growth and healthy behaviors in mice engineered to develop Angelman syndrome, pointing to a possible treatment target. Children with Angelman syndrome begin to show difficulties with thinking and [...]
Scientists Develop a Clever New Way To Kill Cancer Cells From the Inside
Scientists have developed an experimental strategy that exploits a chemical byproduct of cancer cells to produce anticancer drugs directly inside them. Scientists in Japan have developed an experimental method that uses a chemical produced [...]
Our books are available worldwide!
Online Sellers other than Amazon, Routledge, and IOPP Indigo Global Health Care Equivalency in the Age of Nanotechnology, Nanomedicine and Artifcial Intelligence Global Health Care Equivalency In The Age Of Nanotechnology, Nanomedicine And Artificial [...]
After only a short training, people in a coma managed to send targeted signals
Researchers have succeeded in communicating with brain-injured patients who are unconscious. They see enormous potential in this for future treatments. Patients who lie motionless in bed after a severe brain injury and do not [...]
MIT Scientists Reprogram Immune Cells Inside the Body To Destroy Cancer
Natural killer cells reprogrammed inside mice eliminated lymphoma tumors and helped damaged livers heal, though whether this approach could help people with cancer or autoimmune disease remains unknown. To make a cancer treatment from [...]
Melanoma mRNA Vaccine Shows Promise in Preventing Disease Recurrence
Key takeaways: Phase 3 trial finds personalized intismeran plus pembrolizumab may better prevent high-risk melanoma recurrence after surgery The trial enrolled 1,137 patients and builds on phase 2 results showing about half the recurrence [...]
Scientists Discover a Powerful New Weapon Against a Dangerous Gut Infection
The promise of an experimental treatment for C. difficile gut infections lies partly in the bacteria it leaves alive, according to early laboratory and mouse research. Broad-spectrum antibiotics can disrupt the gut’s microbial community, [...]
Your Bones May Hold a Hidden Clue to Blood Cancer Survival
For people with blood cancers called myelodysplastic syndromes, osteoporosis may hold an overlooked clue to survival, a three-year observational study suggests. In blood cancers that develop in the bone marrow, an important clue to [...]
Researchers Discover What Reading for Pleasure May Be Doing to Your Brain
Reading for pleasure may offer surprising benefits for the brain, with research linking the habit to better mental health, stronger cognitive abilities, and a lower risk of dementia. Reading for pleasure may do far [...]
Scientists Discover a Hidden Trigger That Keeps Inflammation Alive
Inflammation persists after proteins detach from immune receptors, revealing a potential target for autoimmune treatments. Since a Nobel Prize-winning discovery in the 1990s identified molecules called Toll-like Receptors as the guardians of the human [...]
A Virus Gives Itself Away the Moment It Attacks
Researchers have found the trigger behind a powerful bacterial defense against viruses. Viruses that prey on bacteria could become an increasingly important tool for treating bacterial infections, particularly as antibiotic resistance makes some infections [...]
Scientists Discover Aspirin May Slash Dementia Risk by 70% – but Only for Certain People
Aspirin was linked to a sharply lower dementia risk in some older adults, and their genes may hold the clue. A Monash University analysis found that older adults with a particular genetic profile had [...]
Inflammation May Awaken Dormant Cancer Cells Years After Treatment
The body’s response to inflammation may disturb cancer cells that have been lying silent for years, giving them an opportunity to grow again. Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute have found that gut inflammation [...]
