By Stephanie Kossman and Danielle Roedel, Brookhaven Lab
UPTON, N.Y. — Artificial intelligence has the potential to revolutionize scientific research — in ways that can feel like science fiction but are within reach.
At the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, scientists are already using AI to automate experiments and discover new materials. They’re even designing an AI scientific companion that communicates in ordinary language and helps conduct experiments. And Kevin Yager, the Electronic Nanomaterials Group leader at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN), has articulated an overarching vision for the role of AI in scientific research.
It’s called a science exocortex — “exo” meaning outside and “cortex” referencing the information processing layer of the human brain. Rather than simple chatbots and scientific assistants, the conceptualized exocortex will be an extension of a scientist’s brain. Researchers will interact with it through conversation, without the need for any invasive brain-computer interfaces.
Extending the Brain
“An exocortex, realized through software, would serve as a new source of thinking, inspiration, and imagination,” said Yager, whose vision was recently published in Digital Discovery. “If we design and build the exocortex correctly, our interactions with it will feel like those ‘aha’ moments we sometimes have upon waking from sleep or while otherwise ruminating on a problem. You won’t check in with an exocortex; you’ll experience it.”
Yager describes the exocortex as analogous to the layers of the human brain, which developed through the course of human evolution. Over millions of years, the human brain became the information processing masterpiece it is today by accumulating new layers, each one more sophisticated than the last. The bottom of the brain controls basic survival functions, like breathing. Other, more advanced layers tackle increasingly complicated functions, like emotional regulation and language processing. Most importantly, all facets of the brain work together in harmony to form “the human experience.”
“Technologically, we have the potential now to add another, external layer to the brain — one that connects us to AI,” Yager said. “And just like the specialized regions of the brain that coordinate with each other to give emergence to what we call intelligence, the exocortex will integrate individualized AI capabilities to solve a problem or generate creativity.”
An “App Store” of AI Agents
Compared to the average chatbot, which is a single AI system, the exocortex would be a collection of dozens of AI agents working together — customized to a researcher’s individual needs.
Each agent would be trained to carry out specific science-related tasks. A scientific literature agent, for example, could sift through published papers to find an optimal protocol for an experiment, while another AI agent collects and analyzes data from a running experiment. Additional agents could launch experiments or simulations, compare findings to previous studies, or even propose ideas for subsequent experiments.
All of the agents’ tasks will happen in concert, simultaneously, and without manual intervention, culminating in new insights delivered to the human researcher.
One design aspect of Yager’s proposed exocortex is that the AI agents will communicate with one another in plain English language. This will enable human scientists to study and audit the chains of decisions that lead to a particular AI outcome, providing much-needed opportunities to assess accuracy and exert engineering control.
Yager says the task of building an exocortex is enormous, and the developmental effort should be shared among scientists worldwide, so individual research groups can leverage their own expertise to design new agents. Ideally, scientists will one day have “an app store” from which they can download AI agents that will enhance the abilities of their own exocortex, similar to how downloading new apps adds functionality to phones. Individual AI “apps” could also be efficiently updated and replaced.
“I expect to see a multiplicative effect,” explained Yager. “As scientists simultaneously improve the individual AIs and the foundational exocortex technology, the capabilities of the exocortex will likely grow much faster than people expect.”
Of course, making the exocortex a reality won’t be easy. While scientists have designed a plethora of AIs that can interface with a user and complete specific tasks, building a network of AIs that can interact with each other is an entirely new challenge.
Yager expects each AI agent to require access to a “catalog” of the other agents and their specialized abilities, so they each can send messages describing the work they’ve done and explaining what they need from other AI agents.
“No one knows how to do this yet,” Yager said. Among the challenges is determining the ideal organization of agents. “Should it be a hierarchy where there is a chief with leaders and employees, like how a company operates? Or should it be more fluid, so the AIs figure out the workflow themselves? There is no obvious answer, and this is an exciting research question about the exocortex design that we are investigating.”
The final output of the exocortex will be a result of some sequence of decisions, planning, execution, verification, and summarization, rather than the simple text that a generative chatbot outputs. This extra iteration, promoted by the communication between AI agents and the exocortex structure, will ultimately improve the output and make the AI even more intelligent.
Experiments to Excursions
Yager and colleagues are currently focused on building an exocortex to accelerate nanoscience research at CFN, a DOE Office of Science user facility at Brookhaven Lab.
“At CFN, we strive to provide cutting-edge resources to our users to help them conduct productive experiments,” Yager said. “We see incredible value in using methods that integrate AI, and we have already implemented robotic platforms and autonomous experiments that leverage AI for specific experiments. We are designing the exocortex for CFN, but we have visions for strategically implementing it across Brookhaven Lab and the broader scientific community.”
The physical sciences are particularly well-suited for testing new AI concepts, like the exocortex, because scientists can leverage existing data and software when designing the AI agents. Furthermore, these fields have clear metrics of success, meaning scientists have rigorous definitions to determine whether an AI tool achieved a goal.
The exocortex will certainly not be limited to physical science applications, and it will likely motivate the scientific community to make data, automated tools, and publications widely available for exocortices to access and leverage.
“I expect the exocortex will introduce a virtuous loop in which it both motivates and generates open science,” Yager said. The outputs of the exocortex, from data to new scientific tools, will be widely available — and it may become possible to run experiments at CFN from anywhere in the world.
“Generative chatbots have already leveled the playing field in many ways, such as their ability to translate and explain scientific jargon,” noted Yager. “I hope to see more diverse communities get involved in science because of the exocortex.”
Yager even expects to see something like the exocortex incorporated into everyday life, perhaps within the next five years. It may initially be accessible through computers or smartphones, but having the exocortex integrated into wearable devices, like glasses or watches, may not be as far off as it seems.
Rather than inspiring science experiments, a personal exocortex could simultaneously orchestrate many daily tasks. The exocortex could schedule a date, preorder coffee, and call a car to one’s favorite café, based on their desire to reconnect with a friend. Or it could plan a complex trip — including flights, hotels, itinerary, and restaurant reservations — with minimal human intervention because the exocortex knows its user’s habits and preferences.
“Chatbots seem mildly intelligent now, but that level of intelligence integrated throughout a person’s life could be very powerful,” said Yager.
The exocortex is yet to come, but one AI output — a podcast, generated by Google’s Notebook LM and featuring two AIs discussing Yager’s exocortex paper amongst themselves — gives a hint of what life could be like with an exocortex.
“The AI podcasters were emphasizing things differently than I would have,” Yager explained. “But then I realized how interesting it was to observe how my work could be tailored to different learning styles or audiences.
“Imagine you wake up in the morning and an AI from your exocortex explains all the papers it read overnight,” Yager proposed. “It could keep you up to date on your field of study in a very conversational way. You could even interrupt and ask for a more in-depth explanation of a specific part.”
This experience is quite the contrast to the “old-school” method of reading a printed scientific paper and making notes in the margins, which will remain an important part of research. But approaching science — and other complex disciplines — with an exocortex could be a game changer for those who have traditionally faced barriers.
“We’re entering unchartered territory with tremendous potential benefits for nanoscience and beyond,” said Yager. “But no one person can do it alone. We need a community.”
