TikTok CEO forecasts AI-driven science breakthroughs

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew told DBS Bank’s “Asia’s View of the Future” conference in Singapore that AI is likely to drive scientific breakthroughs within the next two to three years, particularly in physics, biotechnology, chemistry, and materials science. He described scientific progress as moving on a steep curve and said the field is still early in understanding what AI can do.

ByteDance is already pushing beyond consumer applications. In April 2026, ByteDance Seed introduced Protenix-v2, an open-source model for predicting and designing biomolecular structures. The model has 464 million parameters and supports predictions for protein, DNA, RNA, and small molecule ligand complexes. Its antibody and antigen success rates rose by 13 percentage points from the previous generation, and it needs only 5 initial seeds to beat results from the prior version with 1,000 initial seeds.

Chew’s view aligns with rising industry investment in AI for science. The US government, Meta, and Google announced participation in a $1.8 billion program aimed at building models that predict cell behavior, with the goal of accelerating biological research and drug discovery.

He also warned that autonomous systems bring significant cybersecurity risks. Autonomous AI shopping agents might buy goods outside a user’s intentions, and more capable models reduce the cost of fraud and attacks. He said the next challenge is aligning models and machines with human ethical standards as AI expands beyond recommendations into scientific discovery.