SINGAPORE — TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew expects artificial intelligence to drive major scientific advances and transform a wide range of fields within the next three years.
“Within the next two to three years, we’re going to see real scientific advances in physics, biotechnology, chemistry and materials science, thanks to AI. It’s very, very, very possible,” Chew said at the DBS Asia Future Forward conference in Singapore on Monday.
Chu’s comments come as ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, is expanding its artificial intelligence research beyond consumer applications. In April, the company’s seed research team announced Protenix-v2, an AI model focused on structural prediction and design of biomolecules, with potential applications in drug discovery.
Chu said that while questions remain about how to ensure that increasingly powerful systems operate within human ethical boundaries, rapid advances in AI open up possibilities far beyond the technology’s current applications.
“If that happens, the question is: How do you tune the model? How do you tune the machine to do things that are obvious to humans?” he said.
Mr. Chu highlighted the accelerating pace of technological development, particularly in scientific research, and argued that the long-term impact of AI could be much greater than currently expected.
“The trend is very clear: we’re only at the beginning of what artificial intelligence is likely to be able to do,” he said. “And if you look at the trends and progress, especially in the science field, the trends are moving on a very steep curve at the moment.”
Chu explained that while the technology’s immediate impact may be overstated, its long-term potential remains underestimated. “I think in the short term we’re probably overestimating, but in the long term we’re probably underestimating,” he said.
His optimism comes at a time when tech giants are pouring billions of dollars into AI-powered scientific research. Last week, the U.S. government, Meta, and Google announced their participation in a $1.8 billion initiative to develop AI models that can predict cell behavior, with the aim of accelerating biological research and drug discovery.
TikTok’s parent company ByteDance is also developing its own AI models and exploring opportunities to collaborate with scientists.
“There are efforts being made to see how we can collaborate with many scientists to bring about advances in science as well,” Chu added. “We’ve been doing some research in this area and it’s very exciting.”
He cited scientific discovery as one of the most promising applications for AI, even as the technology is increasingly reshaping TikTok’s operations, from content creation and recommendations to search and moderation.
Chu warned that increasing AI capabilities will require stronger safeguards, especially as autonomous systems become more widely adopted.
“I think the cybersecurity risks are huge,” he said, warning that users could give AI agents broad powers without fully understanding the potential implications.
He pointed to the risks of allowing AI agents to make purchases autonomously, saying users could end up buying more than the system intended in their eagerness to complete the task.
Chu also highlighted the increasing cybersecurity challenges faced by businesses as AI models become increasingly sophisticated, making it much cheaper for malicious actors to commit fraud.
“So we need the right tools to protect against rapidly declining costs that create problems for platforms like ours and security issues for us,” he stressed.
