What once took scientists half a decade can now be done in seconds — thanks to artificial intelligence. At the forefront of this transformation is Manish Gupta, Senior Director at Google DeepMind, who recently spoke about the radical ways AI is reshaping scientific discovery.
At a high-profile tech event in India, Gupta highlighted how AI is no longer just a support tool but a driver of innovation across disciplines. “We are entering a new era,” he remarked, “where AI can compress years of research into moments — not just accelerating science, but redefining how it’s done.”
DeepMind, known for its groundbreaking AlphaFold project, has already proven this. AlphaFold solved one of biology’s toughest puzzles — predicting protein structures — something that stumped researchers for decades. With AI, DeepMind not only solved it but made its findings available to the global scientific community, opening new doors in drug development, disease understanding, and synthetic biology.
Gupta emphasized that AI’s role in science goes far beyond biology. “From climate modeling and quantum physics to material science and mathematics, AI is emerging as a universal research assistant — tireless, scalable, and shockingly precise,” he explained. Tools developed at DeepMind can simulate experiments, analyze patterns across massive datasets, and even propose hypotheses — tasks that once required large teams and years of effort.
But with great power comes great responsibility. Gupta also spoke about the ethical framework required for AI in science. Transparency, reproducibility, and collaboration, he said, are non-negotiables in this fast-paced field. “The goal is not to replace scientists, but to augment them — to give humanity a turbocharged engine for curiosity.”
The Indian tech community received his message with enthusiasm. Gupta’s presence was not only a nod to India’s growing contribution to global AI research but also an inspiration to young developers and scientists looking to make an impact.
As Gupta summed it up: “AI is not the end of human inquiry — it’s a new beginning. When machines think with us, not for us, that’s when real discovery begins.”
