AI’s biggest role in science may not be answering questions. It may be helping scientists find which questions are worth asking.
At @ProvSwedish, AutoDiscovery surfaced an unexpected immune signal in a heavily studied cancer dataset—and follow-up research confirmed it. 🧵
@ProvSwedish The signal involved invasive lobular carcinoma (ILC), a subtype affecting ~48K Americans each year.
ILC has long been considered “immune cold,” with relatively low immune activity. AutoDiscovery found more activity than expected.
@ProvSwedish Providence Swedish researchers ran AutoDiscovery over The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), a resource built from donated cancer patient samples.
AutoDiscovery generated + tested hypotheses across the data, searching for results that challenged expectations.
@ProvSwedish One was the ILC immune signal.
The researchers confirmed the same pattern in separate patient data. Lab analysis subsequently verified it, finding T-cells around ILC tumors.
AI agent — An AI system that doesn't just answer once but works toward a goal in a loop — taking actions, reading the results, and deciding what to do next.
Why it matters
An AI agentAn AI system that doesn't just answer once but works toward a goal in a loop — taking actions, reading the results, and deciding what to do next.Full definition → that generates and tests its own hypotheses over existing data produced a signal that replicated and was later confirmed in the lab, evidence that automated discovery can find real results in heavily studied datasets rather than only summarizing them.
