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FutureHouse releases AI tools it claims can accelerate science
Nonprofit organization FutureHouse has launched its first major product, a platform and API featuring AI-powered tools designed to support scientific work. The release comes as part of the company’s ambitious goal to build an “AI scientist” within the next decade.
According to reports, the nonprofit has developed four AI tools: Crow, Falcon, Owl, and Phoenix. Crow is capable of searching scientific literature and answering questions about it; Falcon can conduct deeper literature searches, including access to scientific databases; Owl looks for previous work in a given subject area; and Phoenix uses tools to help plan chemistry experiments.
FutureHouse claims that its AI Scientist agents are able to perform a wide variety of scientific tasks better than humans. The organization believes that by chaining these agents together at scale, scientists can greatly accelerate the pace of scientific discovery.
However, some experts have expressed skepticism about the potential of FutureHouse’s AI tools. They argue that while AI may be useful in certain areas, such as narrowing down a vast list of possibilities, it is unclear whether AI is capable of out-of-the-box problem-solving that leads to breakthroughs.
Furthermore, previous attempts at using AI for scientific research have been met with underwhelming results. For instance, Google’s AI system GNoME was touted as being able to synthesize new materials, but an outside analysis found that none of the resulting materials were novel or groundbreaking in any way.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/01/futurehouse-releases-ai-tools-it-claims-can-accelerate-science/
