Yan Ning took a photo at the 2018 World Life Science Conference. Beijing News Data map
In the past two days, the news that the famous scientist Yan Ning announced his return to China has attracted widespread attention. On November 1, when attending the speech of the "2022 Shenzhen Global Innovation Talent Forum", Yan Ning announced that he would resign from his American teaching position and return to China. This decision is no less than the public opinion that Yan Ning caused when she came to teach in the United States in 2017. Therefore, many people have some speculations about her motivation for returning to China.
Among them, the most widely spread view is that because Yan Ning is engaged in structural biology encountered the "strike of love" by AI technology, human calculations cannot compare with AI calculations, and job opportunities and results will gradually decrease, so he can only return to China. Some versions of
also provide detailed "guessing basis": Yan Ning and others could parse dozens of protein structures a year, but DeepMind, a British company under Google , uses the AlphaFold2 model to parse hundreds of millions of proteins at a time. In recent years, tens of thousands of biological structure scientists have only parsed hundreds of thousands of proteins. Under the crushing of AI (artificial intelligence), structural biologists are about to lose their jobs.
AI is the normal trend for intervention in scientific research
The most important yardstick for evaluating scientific researchers is of course the result. Yan Ning studies protein structure, so this has become the most speculated and widely spread motivation theory . However, as of now, these views are just speculations. What is the fact, it takes time and results to answer and test.
Whether it is a scientific researcher or other profession, the mobility and environmental choices of occupations are normal. In comparison, scientists are certainly willing to flow to those environments that can produce results, and in the end, only results can indicate whether a person’s choice is correct. However, it takes time to produce results, so it is actually too early to judge Yan Ning’s return to China for office.
With the development of technology, AI is involved in scientific research, which is a normal development trend, and it is not only that it requires AI to parse protein structure . In the future, many industries will need AI. Therefore, from the overall trend, AI will replace the work of many people.
, especially in analyzing protein structures, in August 2022, AlphaFold2 announced the predicted structure of approximately 220 million proteins, covering almost all proteins of known organisms in the DNA database .
At the same time, another technology giant Meta (formerly Facebook) is not willing to lag behind. With the help of artificial intelligence ESMFold (the " metagenomic " database), it predicted the structure of more than 600 million proteins from bacteria, viruses and other microorganisms in two weeks.
progresses as this, not only the work of structural biologists will be challenged or even threatened, but researchers in other fields such as biochemistry , drug development, gene sequencing and molecular breeding in agriculture and botany may be challenged. Therefore, if you want to be affected, not only Yan Ning, but everyone will face such a situation.
Moreover, as a leader in the industry, Yan Ning actually has more room for choice in the future. It is actually a bit untenable to say that "Yan Ning chose to return to China because of the challenge of AI."
Yan Ning's return to work in China is his personal choice. Figure/IC photo
AI cannot cover all research
AI On the scientific level, although AI is challenging artificial analysis of protein structures, it still needs to be tested in terms of accuracy, and the product needs to be tested in animals and clinical trials. Because AI only simulates the structure of proteins and other molecules and compounds, rather than truly measuring the structure of matter, not to mention that some molecules and compounds will change under certain conditions, it is necessary to combine the use of the product in practice to obtain accurate knowledge.
Even if AI can analyze some molecular structures, animal experiments and clinical trials are still needed to accurately obtain the reaction conditions, functions and functions of different molecules and compounds. Therefore, AI parsing proteins and other biomolecular structures is just the beginning of research and cannot cover all research and work.
From these situations, it is too early for AI to "unemployed" traditional structural biologists and other biomedical researchers to "unemployed". This is also one of the reasons why Yan Ning doesn't need to use this to guess Yan Ning's return to China.
From the perspective of human development history, technological progress will always accompany humans, and people who keep up with the times are good at adapting to and utilizing technological progress. When biomedicine and other disciplines face the wave of AI, most people will learn and apply such advanced technologies to conduct scientific research and work. As long as they can learn, be good at learning, adapt to and use tools such as AI, they will not face unemployment, but may have more job opportunities and increased benefits and wages.
Yan Ning's return to China may be just a choice to choose the working environment. Yan Ning returned to China to serve as the president of the Shenzhen Academy of Medical Sciences. The funds and resources he could obtain should be much richer than being a professor in the United States, and the motherland also needs such talents.
, and with the power of personnel and sufficient funds, Yan Ning can also form more scientific research teams and laboratories to drive more researchers to work and research together, and perhaps the results they have achieved are more than they can fight alone. Under this circumstance, most people must understand what choice Yan Ning can make.
After all, Yan Ning's return to work in China is his personal choice, and it is also a decision after analysis and prediction of whether he can produce more results. The outside world does not have to "talk about Yan Ning" to let her work and research with peace of mind. In the future, she may be able to respond to everyone with more results.
Written by Zhang Tiankan (columnist)
Editing / Ma Xiaolong
Proofreading / Li Lijun
