Large language models surpass human experts in predicting neuroscience results
This work addresses the challenge of information overload in scientific discovery for researchers, offering a transferable approach that is not incremental but demonstrates a novel application.
The paper tackles the problem of synthesizing vast scientific literature to predict experimental outcomes, showing that large language models (LLMs) surpass human experts in predicting neuroscience results, with BrainGPT achieving even better performance.
Scientific discoveries often hinge on synthesizing decades of research, a task that potentially outstrips human information processing capacities. Large language models (LLMs) offer a solution. LLMs trained on the vast scientific literature could potentially integrate noisy yet interrelated findings to forecast novel results better than human experts. To evaluate this possibility, we created BrainBench, a forward-looking benchmark for predicting neuroscience results. We find that LLMs surpass experts in predicting experimental outcomes. BrainGPT, an LLM we tuned on the neuroscience literature, performed better yet. Like human experts, when LLMs were confident in their predictions, they were more likely to be correct, which presages a future where humans and LLMs team together to make discoveries. Our approach is not neuroscience-specific and is transferable to other knowledge-intensive endeavors.