TikTok's Shou Chew Expects AI Science Breakthrough Within Three Years
Shou Zi Chew, CEO of TikTok, predicted that artificial intelligence (AI) will achieve a major scientific breakthrough in the next two to three years, specifically in fields like physics, biotechnology, chemistry, and materials science. He made these remarks during DBS Bank's Asia Future Forward Conference in Singapore on Monday, as reported by CNBC.
"In the next two to three years, we’re going to have a real scientific breakthrough: physics, biotech, chemistry, material science, because of AI. It’s very, very, very possible." - Shou Chew
Chew's Perspective on AI
While optimistic about AI's future potential, Chew cautioned that people might be overestimating its current capabilities in the short term. He emphasized that humans still excel at tasks involving visual recognition and long-term memory retrieval compared to AI models. These insights were shared by Bloomberg, citing remarks attributed to Chew by Gao Yuan and Gabrielle Ng.
"On the one hand, I think the technology is not there yet. Our brain can do things that the model still cannot."
Cybersecurity Concerns
Chew also highlighted significant cybersecurity risks associated with AI, describing them as "quite real" in the short term. He expressed concern about users granting AI agents excessive permissions without fully understanding the implications. As an example, he mentioned an AI agent given permission to make purchases independently, potentially leading to unintended spending.
ByteDance and AI Development
TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, actively develops its own AI models. In April, Seed research from ByteDance published Protenix-v2, a model for biomolecular structure prediction and design. Additionally, ByteDance has Anew Labs, an AI drug discovery unit. Chew discussed ByteDance's strategy of collaborating with scientists to advance scientific research, highlighting recent efforts like the $1.8 billion AI biology initiative involving Meta, Google, and the US government.