The non-professional side of Organic Chemistry is one place where I think AI would really shine.
Feels complex like solving a Rubik's cube to write down synthesis steps but it is all a sequence of memorized tricks. Do Cannizaro if you want this, Bergmann to do that.
But the synthesis plan is only 10% of the actual work.
The gap between writing down the synthesis step and actually doing it is also extremely large.
Even if you get the right molecule, it might be the wrong way around or just clump up into a useless mess.
The Ritonavir episode of Veritasium is a great example of how all chemistry on paper is a mere shadow of what actually happens in real life.
> Feels complex like solving a Rubik's cube to write down synthesis steps but it is all a sequence of memorized tricks. Do Cannizaro if you want this, Bergmann to do that.
I remember two years ago, when I actually got into using graph data structures, wondering if maybe the "space" of available reactions for any given starter and target molecules could be mapped as a graph, with intermediates as nodes and reactions as weighted directed edges, so synthesis becomes pathfinding through chemical space.
Turns out, it’s a thing! [^0]
Edit: Makes you wonder how much interesting stuff is sitting in plain sight, waiting for someone with the right cross-domain awareness / knowledge / whatever to notice it.
Modern biochemistry (so far) IS vibe coding lol. You mostly have vibes on how the chemistry should work, based on (very strong) natural evidence coupled with theoretical development and lab studies. Then you mix and match, goading bacteria and praying that they produce what you want in good measure. Then you take their secretions and run chromatography studies on them to check if that's what you actually want, or whether it's just some random bullshit. If it's the latter, you have to toss that out and start all over again.
Organic chemistry seems like a discipline better done by chemists than forward deployed staff with their payoff function sharply truncated at an IPO which at this point may or may not happen on schedule.
Combine it with automated lab like this[1][2][3][4][5] (and many others) and it will iterate much quicker. Some already do but at a smaller scale, AFAIK.
If they succeed here, won't they have to gate access to this feature, too? For the same reasons as, "if I so much as mention mitochondria, it downgrades me to Opus."
Step 1. Make it so Claude can do anything — the whole point of AGI
Step 2. Wait, if the user can do Anything, that would be Very Bad!
Step 3. Err on the safe side with blanket bans of entire fields
The latter actually seems to me a sensible reaction to e.g. the compartmentalization used in the large scale cyber attack using Claude last year. Where they were able to do Bad Thing by dividing it into many, many Small, Seemingly Harmless Things.
Gated access sounds bad (and I agree it sounds bad!) but it might actually be the only sensible response to such a set of conditions. I'm not sure though.
--
I saw some studies recently which showed LLMs provide much more detailed information to expert users. So we can distinguish between competence and incompetence based on use of language, and that is a reasonable metric for harm reduction.
But I don't think we can reliably detect "user has harmful intentions", at least not at a sufficient level of sophistication of the attacker.
I think one time I asked opus about copyfail when it just came out and it did treat me like some sort of criminal, but are there really people that run into this on a regular basis other than cybersecurity experts (which cannot be a big enough group to generate all of this criticism)?
I feel like chemistry is one thing that current models will struggle with for the next while, because it's inherently 3D. In the micro world, shape = function. Maybe enough textual patterns will let it under chemistry, but like how do you describe a hydrogen shift without showing how it moves positions and rebalances bonds?
The non-professional side of Organic Chemistry is one place where I think AI would really shine.
Feels complex like solving a Rubik's cube to write down synthesis steps but it is all a sequence of memorized tricks. Do Cannizaro if you want this, Bergmann to do that.
But the synthesis plan is only 10% of the actual work.
The gap between writing down the synthesis step and actually doing it is also extremely large.
Even if you get the right molecule, it might be the wrong way around or just clump up into a useless mess.
The Ritonavir episode of Veritasium is a great example of how all chemistry on paper is a mere shadow of what actually happens in real life.
> Feels complex like solving a Rubik's cube to write down synthesis steps but it is all a sequence of memorized tricks. Do Cannizaro if you want this, Bergmann to do that.
I remember two years ago, when I actually got into using graph data structures, wondering if maybe the "space" of available reactions for any given starter and target molecules could be mapped as a graph, with intermediates as nodes and reactions as weighted directed edges, so synthesis becomes pathfinding through chemical space.
Turns out, it’s a thing! [^0]
Edit: Makes you wonder how much interesting stuff is sitting in plain sight, waiting for someone with the right cross-domain awareness / knowledge / whatever to notice it.
[0]: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9574932/
> Even if you get the right molecule, it might be the wrong way around or just clump up into a useless mess.
Sounds a lot like vibe coding lol
At least vibe coding can only explode in your face metaphorically.
Until vibe code is used for weapons system, or explosive manufacturers, or.. or...
The world today is coding.
Modern biochemistry (so far) IS vibe coding lol. You mostly have vibes on how the chemistry should work, based on (very strong) natural evidence coupled with theoretical development and lab studies. Then you mix and match, goading bacteria and praying that they produce what you want in good measure. Then you take their secretions and run chromatography studies on them to check if that's what you actually want, or whether it's just some random bullshit. If it's the latter, you have to toss that out and start all over again.
Organic chemistry seems like a discipline better done by chemists than forward deployed staff with their payoff function sharply truncated at an IPO which at this point may or may not happen on schedule.
Combine it with automated lab like this[1][2][3][4][5] (and many others) and it will iterate much quicker. Some already do but at a smaller scale, AFAIK.
[1] https://www.ginkgo.bio/autonomous-lab
[2] https://www.emeraldcloudlab.com/
[3] https://www.kebotix.com/
[4] https://www.chemify.io/
[5] https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.01485
If they succeed here, won't they have to gate access to this feature, too? For the same reasons as, "if I so much as mention mitochondria, it downgrades me to Opus."
Step 1. Make it so Claude can do anything — the whole point of AGI
Step 2. Wait, if the user can do Anything, that would be Very Bad!
Step 3. Err on the safe side with blanket bans of entire fields
The latter actually seems to me a sensible reaction to e.g. the compartmentalization used in the large scale cyber attack using Claude last year. Where they were able to do Bad Thing by dividing it into many, many Small, Seemingly Harmless Things.
Gated access sounds bad (and I agree it sounds bad!) but it might actually be the only sensible response to such a set of conditions. I'm not sure though.
--
I saw some studies recently which showed LLMs provide much more detailed information to expert users. So we can distinguish between competence and incompetence based on use of language, and that is a reasonable metric for harm reduction.
But I don't think we can reliably detect "user has harmful intentions", at least not at a sufficient level of sophistication of the attacker.
I think one time I asked opus about copyfail when it just came out and it did treat me like some sort of criminal, but are there really people that run into this on a regular basis other than cybersecurity experts (which cannot be a big enough group to generate all of this criticism)?
I just wait until a Opensource model inhaled all the chemistry books and papers. Lol.
They are following closely and the best offer 80-90% of the performance and come with a very small fraction of the costs.
Why wouldn't the US gov. outlaw the open source models?
What good is it if you can't use it? Or worse, if you can but it silently sabotages you?
> We measured three Claude models (Opus 4.7, Opus 4.6, Sonnet 4.6)
You can use those and they probably won't intentionally sabotage you.
Yeah. Probably.
I guess the future is one where every idiot has access to a genius servant, and all that implies
I feel like chemistry is one thing that current models will struggle with for the next while, because it's inherently 3D. In the micro world, shape = function. Maybe enough textual patterns will let it under chemistry, but like how do you describe a hydrogen shift without showing how it moves positions and rebalances bonds?
I vote for "Claude Pinkman" as a name
Let’s ban this before it gets too powerful !
I wonder if every future announcement will be met with this criticism. Like, what's the point if they'll ban it in a few days.
I don't think it should be outright banned, automated intelligence is like a gun, hammer, knife, nuclear warhead, etc.
I see that intelligence itself is a tool, but that doesn't mean I want an automated gun, automated hammer, automated nuclear warhead, etc.
You may not want them, but the NRA certainly wants that you want them.
In the future perhaps it will mean "Neural Rifle Automaton"
not really, though. you don't see automated intelligence in the hands of junkies et al. ... and you don't see it coming, either ...
Junkies et al can log into chatgpt right now and use it to create a phishing email to steal drug money from your Grandma. Many people saw this coming.
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inb4 someone calls Bessent to explain how this can be used in fentanyl production.
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