AI input led to development of a hypothesis that spiritual practice may help improve OCD.

AI's ability to synthesize data from diverse databases has led to scientific discoveries.

Interactions with AI can help generate hypotheses that researchers can investigate.

I have been using Claude (an AI) to help research information regarding a new book that I am writing. As part of the feedback that Claude has given me, it has presented unexpected combinations of ideas derived from the material that I have been researching. These combinations were made possible because of its ability to rapidly synthesize information from diverse databases.

Some of these combinations have helped me discover new intriguing ways of thinking about the subject matter at hand. Because of this, I realized that AI may help accelerate the occurrence of serendipitous scientific discoveries.

The Discovery of Antibiotics

Major advances in science initially were based on observations of events around us. A famous example of a serendipitous observation involved Dr. Alexander Fleming’s discovery that led to characterization of antibiotics.

Fleming was growing bacteria in petri dishes and noticed that in one dish, no bacteria grew in an area of mold contamination. He asked himself how this could be, and reasoned that the mold produced an anti-bacterial compound. Fleming's observation eventually led to the development of penicillin, one of the most transformative medical discoveries of the twentieth century (Lax, 2004).

A Patient With PANDAS and OCD

The same spirit of curiosity that drove Fleming to ask how rather than simply move on led me to look more closely at a remarkable patient I describe in my book, who dealt with Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders associated with strep infections (PANDAS). With this illness, it is thought that the inflammation produced by the body to fight the strep bacteria ends up attacking and damaging the brain.

Because of his illness that........

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