Scientific method scales

Tonight I went to an AI Innovators meetup in Weights & Biases in Amsterdam. Thank you Alessandro Stefouli-Vozza for suggesting it!

And something unexpected happened.

They started talking about chemists using AI to accelerate carbon removal discovery.

Carbon removal.

Atmospheric chemistry.

Experimental iteration.

Massive combinatorial search.

Scientific method… on steroids.

And I felt 17 again.

Most people here probably don’t know this about me:

In high school I was a chemistry nerd.

County-wide awards.

Lab competitions.

The whole thing.

I originally chose Chemical Engineering as my major.

With a minor in music and computer science.

Yes. I was that person. 🎻🧪💾

And then in my fourth year…

I switched to a major in Computer Science Engineering and I started on the path of who you know today!

At the time, it felt like a pivot.

Tonight, it felt like a circle closing.

Because what they showed was fascinating:

Instead of running experiments one by one in a physical lab,

AI models simulate thousands, sometimes millions, of molecular combinations.

They predict which compounds might bind carbon efficiently. Bigger gaps in their structures.

They eliminate dead ends before humans ever touch a pipette.

They massively compress the experimentation cycle.

What used to take years… !!! And SOOOO MUCH PATIENCE which I didn’t always have

can now be narrowed down in weeks.

It’s not replacing scientists.

It’s amplifying the scientific method.

And that’s when I smiled.

Because in my Leadership Leap book I talk about bringing scientific thinking into product and engineering teams.

Hypothesis.

Experiment.

Measure.

Learn.

Adapt.

Not opinion-driven delivery.

Not ego-driven roadmaps.

Not “we’ve always done it this way.”

But structured experimentation aimed to fail! To learn! And magnify impact!!!

AI is doing for chemistry what great product leadership should do for teams:

Increase the speed of validated learning.

The funny thing?

I never really left chemistry.

I just changed laboratories.

From molecules…

to systems.

From compounds…

to teams.

From carbon capture…

to value creation.

PS. I say the same about ART and ENGINEERING btw ;-) all artists! Different mediums!

And tonight reminded me:

The future belongs to people who understand experimentation. Dare to be creative! And have courage to fail toward learning!

Whether you’re removing carbon from the atmosphere

or removing friction from a product.

Or turning a ink blob into a spider’s head ;-) …

Scientific method scales.

Curiosity scales.

Learning velocity scales.

And AI?

It’s just the newest lab assistant.

💚🔥