Is novelty predictable?

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Fannjiang, Clara, Listgarten, Jennifer
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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author Fannjiang, Clara
Listgarten, Jennifer
author_facet Fannjiang, Clara
Listgarten, Jennifer
contents Machine learning-based design has gained traction in the sciences, most notably in the design of small molecules, materials, and proteins, with societal implications spanning drug development and manufacturing, plastic degradation, and carbon sequestration. When designing objects to achieve novel property values with machine learning, one faces a fundamental challenge: how to push past the frontier of current knowledge, distilled from the training data into the model, in a manner that rationally controls the risk of failure. If one trusts learned models too much in extrapolation, one is likely to design rubbish. In contrast, if one does not extrapolate, one cannot find novelty. Herein, we ponder how one might strike a useful balance between these two extremes. We focus in particular on designing proteins with novel property values, although much of our discussion addresses machine learning-based design more broadly.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2306_00872
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Is novelty predictable?
Fannjiang, Clara
Listgarten, Jennifer
Machine Learning
Biomolecules
Quantitative Methods
Machine learning-based design has gained traction in the sciences, most notably in the design of small molecules, materials, and proteins, with societal implications spanning drug development and manufacturing, plastic degradation, and carbon sequestration. When designing objects to achieve novel property values with machine learning, one faces a fundamental challenge: how to push past the frontier of current knowledge, distilled from the training data into the model, in a manner that rationally controls the risk of failure. If one trusts learned models too much in extrapolation, one is likely to design rubbish. In contrast, if one does not extrapolate, one cannot find novelty. Herein, we ponder how one might strike a useful balance between these two extremes. We focus in particular on designing proteins with novel property values, although much of our discussion addresses machine learning-based design more broadly.
title Is novelty predictable?
topic Machine Learning
Biomolecules
Quantitative Methods
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.00872