AI has helped MIT scientists find the first new antibiotic candidates in 60 years

In the US alone, a drug-resistant bug called MRSA infects 80,000 people every year and kills more than 10,000. Researchers at MIT used a ‘deep learning’ AI to search for new antibiotics. The AI learns to identify chemical structures that may have antimicrobial properties. It then sifts through millions of compounds and predicts which of them have the greatest potential as antibiotics.