Artificial Intelligence and Scientific Research: Seminar by Prabhakar Raghavan, Google’s Chief Technologist, at Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna

Can artificial intelligence become a valuable asset for scientific research? This was the central question of the seminar titled “Can AI assist in Mathematics and Computer Science research?”, held today, October 2, at 11:00 AM in the Aula Magna of Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa. The event featured a special guest, Prabhakar Raghavan, Chief Technologist at Google and one of the world’s leading experts in algorithm research, web search, and artificial intelligence.

In front of more than 150 attendees, Prabhakar Raghavan joined the Rector of Scuola Sant’Anna, Nicola Vitiello, and Professor Paolo Ferragina to explore the role of AI in supporting creativity and scientific discovery. Raghavan’s talk highlighted results achieved through the use of AlphaEvolve, a system developed by Google DeepMind.

AlphaEvolve has contributed to the identification of new findings in mathematics and computer science—results that, according to Raghavan, would have been difficult to obtain through traditional approaches. The seminar thus offered a concrete opportunity to reflect on potential models of collaboration between artificial and human intelligence in scientific research.

Raghavan’s talk is part of a broader international debate on the role of AI technologies in generating new knowledge.

Prabhakar Raghavan brings over thirty years of experience spanning academia and industry. He is also the author of seminal academic texts such as Randomized Algorithms and Introduction to Information Retrieval. Before his current role at Google, he held leadership positions at Yahoo! Labs, Verity, and IBM Research.