Chemistry is stuck in the dark ages – ‘chemputation’ can bring it into the digital world

Slow and Costly Discovery Process: New drugs and materials are developed slowly, expensively, and unreliably, as each molecule is manually synthesized with bespoke methods.
Traditional Chemistry Workflow: Chemists rely heavily on manual, step-by-step lab techniques inherited from alchemists despite advanced analytical tools.
AI and Robotics: There’s an increasing use of AI and robotics in chemistry, though there is an ongoing issue with AI generating impractical or imaginary molecules.
Need for a Digital Chemistry Language: To fully digitize chemistry, a programmable, machine-readable language is needed to encode and execute real-world rules of molecule synthesis.
Chemputation Concept: The chemputation concept proposes treating chemistry as a form of computation, translating chemical steps into binary code for a digital chemistry system, or “chemputer.”
Self-driving Laboratories: The launch of a chemifarm at the University of Glasgow signifies the development of self-learning robotic labs that use AI and automation for faster and more advanced molecule discovery.
Evolution from Alchemy to Digital Science: Chemistry needs to transition fully into the digital age using AI and robotics to keep up with technological advancements.
Hope for Future Producibility and Error Correction: With programmable chemistry, reproducibility, sharing, and real-time feedback for error correction are expected to improve significantly.

Chemistry is stuck in the dark ages – ‘chemputation’ can bring it into the digital world | Art & Leisure