Artificial Intelligence is considered one of the most revolutionary developments in the history of technology. Within a few years, the world has already witnessed the transformative capabilities of this tech. Not to our surprise, AI is already driving several innovations and powering some of the most cutting-edge everyday solutions. Already, a captivating conversation is taking place about the future of artificial intelligence and what it will/should mean for humanity. There are stirring controversies where the world's leading experts disagree such as AI's future impact on the job market; what will happen if human-level AI will be developed, will it lead to an intelligence explosion, and whether we should welcome or fear this advancement.

A fundamental question in AI is what mechanisms suffice for computer programs to make scientific discoveries. My Ph.D. thesis (Valdés-Pérez 1990e) addresses this question by automating the following scientific task to a significant extent: Given observed data about a particular chemical reaction, discover the underlying set of reaction steps from starting materials to products, that is, elucidate the reaction pathway. My scientific contribution is to describe and interpret the design of a system that forms plausible explanatory hypotheses about dynamic processes in science and that proposes unseen entities in a manner justified by simplicity. Some byproducts of the thesis are several novel contributions to chemistry knowledge in addition to scientific tools of immediate use. Chapter 1 surveys previous work in machine discovery, focusing on work that involved assembling an extensive amount of knowledge particular to a domain.

Machine Learning, 12 (1-3), 117-41.

A fundamental question in AI is what mechanisms suffice for computer programs to make scientific discoveries. My Ph.D. thesis addresses this question by automating the following scientific task to a significant extent: Given observed data about a particular chemical reaction, discover the underlying set of reaction steps from starting materials to products, that is, elucidate the reaction pathway.

A fundamental question in AI is what mechanisms suffice for computer programs to make scientific discoveries. My Ph.D. thesis addresses this question by automating the following scientific task to a significant extent: Given observed data about a particular chemical reaction, discover the underlying set of reaction steps from starting materials to products, that is, elucidate the reaction pathway.