Artificial Intelligence and Molecular Biology

Molecular biology is emerging as an important domain for artificial intelligence research. The advantages of biology for design and testing of AI systems include large amounts of available online data, significant (but incomplete) background knowledge, a wide variety of problems commensurate with AI technologies, clear standards of success, cooperative domain experts, non-military basic research support and percieved potential for practical (and profitable) applications. These considerations have motivated a growing group of researchers to pursue both basic and applied AI work in the domain. More than seventy-five researchers working on these problems gathered at Stanford for a AAAI sponsored symposium on the topic. This article provides a description of much of the work presented at the meeting, and fills in the basic biology background necessary to place it in context.

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