Chemical synthesis with artificial intelligence: Researchers develop new computer method: Machine learning enables syntheses to be planned with unprecedented efficiency

Marwin Segler, the lead author of the study, puts it in a nutshell: "Retrosynthesis is the ultimate discipline in organic chemistry. Chemists need years to master it -- just like with chess or Go. In addition to straightforward expertise, you also need a goodly portion of intuition and creativity for it. So far, everyone assumed that computers couldn't keep up without experts programming in tens of thousands of rules by hand. What we have shown is that the machine can, by itself, learn the rules and their applications from the literature available."