A bust-up between mathematicians is fuelling fears that AI could undermine science

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A bank of white freezers hums away at a former watch factory in central London. Inside: dozens of small boxes with barcoded glass tubes, collectively containing one hundred billion genes. Just two boxes may hold 10 times more information than all the text on the internet, says Dr Oliver Vince, the facility's co-founder.

His firm, Basecamp Research, plans to collect as much DNA as possible to create an artificial intelligence that can speak the language of biology, in the same way that US and Chinese tech firms have hoovered up written material online to create Large Language Models (LLMs), the basis of current AI systems.

Vince, like many in business and academic research, believes AI will supercharge scientific research.…