About this episode

Vivek Natarajan discusses the application of AI in scientific reasoning and medical diagnostics, highlighting breakthroughs and systems developed at Google DeepMind.

Vivek Natarajan, Research Lead for AI, science and medicine at Google DeepMind, on porting the self-play and search recipe behind AlphaGo into scientific and clinical reasoning. He walks through the AI co-scientist, which generates and debates hypotheses (one matched a decade of lab work in two days), and AMIE, a diagnostic dialogue system trained in simulation. Recorded at RAAIS 2026. Chapters: 0:00 Welcome and introducing the AI co-scientist 1:41 Origins: Med-PaLM and the leap to hypothesis generation 5:10 System 1 versus System 2 thinking 6:34 Borrowing from AlphaGo: self-play and search 8:02 Generate, debate, evolve, and tournaments 11:47 Testing in real labs: Imperial College and antimicrobial resistance 13:29 Ten years in two days: Penadés reacts 15:44 More breakthroughs: leukemia, liver fibrosis and vorinostat 18:44 Plant immunity and protein design 20:09 Democratizing medicine: from Med-PaLM benchmarks 21:28 AMIE and the value of experience 23:12 Diagnosis, empathy and augmenting doctors 25:19 Real patients: the Beth Israel feasibility study 27:21 The co-clinician and the new triad of care 28:31 Audience Q&A

People in this episode

Host: Nathan Benaich

Guest: Vivek Natarajan

Topics covered

• AI in science
• collaborative agents
• hypothesis generation
• diagnostic systems
• medical breakthroughs
• clinical reasoning

Keywords

• AI co-scientist
• self-play
• hypothesis generation
• diagnostic dialogue
• medical AI
• clinical reasoning
• Med-PaLM
• AMIE

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Google DeepMind, Imperial College, Beth Israel

Products: AlphaGo

Books & works: Med-PaLM, AMIE

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