Abhishaike Mahajan recently wrote an excellent piece on how generative ML in chemistry is bottlenecked by synthesis (disclaimer: I gave some comments on the piece, so I may be biased). One of the common reactions to this piece has been that self-driving labs and robotics will soon solve this problem—this is a pretty common sentiment, and one that I’ve heard a lot. Unfortunately, I think that the strongest version of this take is wrong: organic synthesis won’t be “solved” by just rep...
