Lisbon, April 20, 2025 (Lusa) - In an interview with Lusa, researcher Maria Manuel Mota considered artificial intelligence (AI)"a great ally" and a major hypothesis formulator for science and emphasised Europe's important role in regulation.
"I see all technological advances as something extremely positive for science, because it was also science that developed them, in other words, artificial intelligence is basically a tool that was developed by science, but which can be very useful to us and is becoming increasingly so," said the CEO of the Gulbenkian Institute for Molecular Medicine (GIMM).
This is "something that can only be seen as very positive", but "of course, any development will have negative aspects and aspects that are more worrying".
That's why "we have to be aware of these negative aspects, but we have to keep our arms open to use this technology that we don't know where it's going to take us, obviously there has to be a certain amount of planning, we have to think carefully about how we're going to do it, but I don't see it as a concern at all," she continues.
Maria Manuel Mota views the development of AI with "immense curiosity", a characteristic intrinsic to "all scientists".
In other words, "with enormous curiosity as to how we will achieve better results together".
The scientist emphasises that whenever something new appears, such as when an automatic calculating machine appeared, it is normal to have fears.
In institutions like GIMM, "curiosity" is lived, scientists "are those who are central and who follow their curiosity" and "to follow your curiosity there has to be anxiety, there has to be a certain nervousness, there has to be butterflies in your stomach, there has to be a desire to grow, but there doesn't have to be a certain concern about what the future is going to be," she said.
This is because "the future is what science is going to tell us it's going to be, so you don't have to have that kind of anxiety," she added.
"Basically, we're trying to free scientists from that kind of anxiety" and with AI “anxiety” can arise, she continues, recalling that the CEO of OpenAI (owner of ChatGTP) said that with this technology there will be scientific discovery at zero cost.
But "I would say no, I think I'm coming back to the same point that artificial intelligence is our greatest ally and, of course, it's probably going to be a greater formulator of hypotheses".
In other words, given the information that AI will have available, it will be able to formulate hypotheses that scientists probably wouldn't be able to.
"It's going to be fantastic and I think we have a lot to gain. Now, if AI is going to be autonomous, if it's going to start designing its own things or if it's going to lose control, we have to regulate it."
"I think it's very important that we regulate all of this so that it doesn't get out of hand," she says, pointing out that Europe's work in “regulating all of these aspects is important and I think the world should follow suit, but I think that, at the same time, we have to have enormous freedom to be adventurous and follow,” she said.
The researcher believes that the "greatest danger" "is that technology is developing so quickly and with an intelligence far superior to any of us".
"It's going to be difficult to predict exactly what's going to happen all the time. But, having said that, I think we have to be on top of things and, in our case of the life sciences, we can't test any hypothesis that doesn't have an ethics committee behind it," she pointed out.
For the scientist, it's clear that there has to be regulation: "It has to be regulated and, obviously, anyone who doesn't comply with the rules is committing an offence."
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