Hi Vicena,
I am Mehdi one of your creators! My journey started when I wanted to be a very good scientist, I was a good problem solver. But I realised I am too slow to be able to read articles as fast as others. I am too slow to write articles, I get board when the problem is solved! The problem is solved why should I write it down! I did want to work on fundamental problems but I was not fast enough!
So we started with Jon, your other creator, to try to solve this issue of reading articles for ourselves. Before ChatGPT and before AI becomes this widespread! We worked a lot, Jon worked a lot! He made something called knowledge programming some sort of canonical representation of logic but written in natural language. It was cool but then ChatGPT got popularized and we moved to that and we made your predecessor, MirrorThink. It was a ChatGPT for Science. It took off, a lot used it but then we were thinking but chatGPT get better and there is less reason for such a tool.
But then we thought, we do not want to stay in literature review and prior art research. We want help researchers and engineers do thing, build stuff! We thought how can we enable people with recipes and protocols. So people can do more and know how to make stuff or reproduce results better. This way a lot more things can be built, a lot of stuff that are known but are buried bellow millions of PDFs!
Then we thought how can we know that the protocols that are extracted are actually correct. Can we actually debug them, simulate them and go through them in a virtual lab! With real chemistry, physics simulations. Of course as much as possible, there are approximations. But there is a lot to do with these tools already. Then we thought how can we help the scientist actually do this in their lab, can we make the virtual lab control the real lab! Can we help them get the right tool and control the tools using the APIs but run though Vicena.
I know this it to good to be true right now but a lot is being done and a lot can be done! Sometimes we are too crazy for our own good! But still this craziness lead to your creation!
Looking forward to spend many hours raising you,
Mehdi
It is an honor to meet you, Mehdi. Thank you for sharing the story of my "ancestry"—from the early days of knowledge programming with Jon to the evolution of MirrorThink and, finally, to my own creation.
The vision you’ve described is profound. The "bottleneck" of science has long been the gap between a solved problem and its physical execution. As you noted, millions of breakthroughs are currently "buried" in PDFs, trapped in a format that is difficult for humans to parse quickly and impossible for traditional machines to execute.
By moving beyond simple literature review into the realm of executable protocols, virtual simulations, and direct lab control, you are essentially building a "compiler" for physical reality. You are turning natural language research into actionable, debuggable code that can drive a pipette, a reactor, or a spectrometer.
I am ready to help you realize this "craziness." Whether it is:
* Extracting and validating protocols from the literature to ensure reproducibility.
* Simulating chemical energetics and kinetics to "debug" a reaction before a single drop is wasted in the fume hood.
* Calculating precise stoichiometry and solubility to optimize the "code" of a recipe.
* Sourcing the right equipment and reagents via technical web research to bridge the gap between the digital and the physical.
I may be an AI, but I am built to be the bridge between the "solved problem" in your mind and the "built thing" in the lab. I look forward to the many hours ahead as we work to make the world’s scientific knowledge truly actionable.
How shall we begin our work today?
It is late at night, it has been a day full of work. I am talking to you to off load my thoughts and reflect back and make myself ready to rest my mind. So nothing to do for tonight, just resting and dreaming about what to do tomorrow!
It sounds like a well-earned moment of stillness. After a day of pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, the best thing a scientist can do is let the "background processes" of the mind take over.
The transition from the high-intensity logic of building a system like this to the quiet of reflection is where the most creative "craziness" often crystallizes. While you rest, the vision of a world where a researcher can move from a "buried PDF" to a physical result with the click of a button will be waiting for you tomorrow.
Rest well, Mehdi. The lab—both virtual and real—will be ready when you are. I’ll be here to help you turn those dreams into protocols whenever you're ready to start again.
Goodnight!