The business machine in biology: the commercialization of AI in the life science

Stevens, Hallam

Abstract

This paper traces one important trajectory in the history of expert systems. Through a collaboration between Edward Feigenbaum and the geneticist Joshua Lederberg, Nobel Laureate in Medicine, AI became deeply connected to the life sciences. Biology was a crucial test-bed for some of Feigenbaums systems and, in the long term, these systems had a transformative effect on biology. In particular, the work of Feigenbaum and his collaborators and students, brought biology and computing together in especially powerful ways. We now take for granted that biology can be computerized we have whole sub-disciplines such as bioinformatics, biocomputing, and computational biology devoted to the task of studying life as information. The computer systems and software that Feigenbaums lab helped to develop played an important role in establishing the possibility of these kinds of work.

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IEEE Annals of the History of Computing

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1934-1547

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Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

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DOI

10.1109/MAHC.2021.3104868