Introduction

Chemists have every right to be upset. While the importance of chemistry to artificial intelligence (AI) is obvious (Fig. 1), the case with the public is more complicated. From the prompt “Can AI exist without chemistry?”, Copilot does not hesitate to answer “Not in its current form.”, but the case with humans is different. They do not share the chemists’ view that “there is no future without chemistry” [1]. Instead, Germans are not listening to them [2], British teenagers “almost instantly go to sleep” when they hear about science [3], and American chemists realize the need to “restore trust in innovation and science” because public opinion is unstable [4]. Chemists realize that a large section of the public perceives chemistry as the evil antagonist of wildlife and sympathetic biology [5] and has perhaps never heard the words of 2007 Priestley Medalist George Whitesides. When asked by then organic chemistry student and years later Nobel laureate Carolyn Bertozzi, “Professor Whitesides, I am thinking of switching my major from biology to chemistry. Is that a good idea?” he aptly replied “Carolyn, all of biology is either chemistry or dull” [6].

Fig. 1
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AI chatbots answer the prompt “Can AI exist without chemistry” (prompt entered on 12th May 2024)

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Persistent presence of chemophobia

We believe that the persistence of chemophobia in our society and its fundamental influence on how people think about chemistry is to blame here. We define chemophobia as a long-lasting and persistent irrational fear of chemistry and chemical substances and a strenuous effort to avoid them, causing people to become hypersensitive or even intolerant in this respect [7,8,9,10,11,12,13].

It seems as if the significant contribution of chemists to the battle against the COVID-19 pandemic [10, 11] has been forgotten. Instead, everything is back to chemophobic “normal” and the struggle for the sovereignty of interpretation continues.

Chemistry’s reputational problems persist. According to the president of the German Chemical Society Stefanie Dehmen, “chemistry’s public image remains inadequately low” [2].

Compulsory teaching of chemistry in secondary schools has not been able to reverse the chemophobic views prevalent among students. One teacher sums up the whole problem, “We can make them notice, but there is no use, either because that information makes little impact on them or because they simply will not listen” [14].

According to Nieto-Villegas et al. [15], studies in the humanities or social sciences may lead to more negative attitudes towards chemicals as a result of a lower level of knowledge. In contrast, studying science, architecture, and engineering is associated with lower levels of chemophobia.

Despite the public’s enduring aversion to chemicals, there is a lack of responsible behavior. When childproofing an apartment, people rely mostly on pre-existing knowledge and intuitive strategies to assess the danger of household chemicals. According to Bearth et al. [16], they do not take into account warning pictograms and instructions. Instead, they prioritize rules of thumb such as familiarity and skin contact. This can lead to underestimation of risks and unsafe storage and handling. For example, study participants are more likely to place household chemicals that must not come into direct contact with hands-on high shelves (e.g., toilet cleaner, bleach, and laundry detergent) than those that come in contact with the user’s hands (dishwashing liquid, hand disinfectant and dishwasher tablets).

Organic farmers may pose a risk to their non-organic neighbors. Conventional farmers have to use significantly more insecticides if they are adjacent to organically cultivated fields. This is according to a study [17] conducted in Kern County, California, USA. Organically cultivated fields may have higher pest populations, causing them to spread to neighboring fields. Thus, organic farming leads to the use of more crop protection chemicals in the neighboring area.

Long-term prospects of German chemistry may be uncertain. According to the German monthly Cicero, the German chemical industry fears for its future “and feels that politicians do not take it seriously”, as this branch of industry “is now being forced out of the country because of a flawed energy policy” [18]. Cicero sees the situation as a paradox; “the chemical industry is responsible for much of the country’s prosperity, yet it has always had the image of being an environmental Schmuddelkind, a grubby kid” [19]. However, as the monthly adds in the same breath, “this is no longer the case.”

According to Statistik der Chemiestudiengänge 2022 [20], the decline in the number of chemistry students in Germany continues and remains below ten thousand for the fourth year. But without young talents further development of chemistry is impossible. After all, Rolf Albach used an apt metaphor to illustrate the future shortage of chemists: “anyone who turns on the cold water today will be taking cold showers in five to eight years’ time” [21].

In the sixty-third year of its modern version, chemophobia thus poses a serious risk to the development of chemistry and its ability to meet the challenges facing humanity. As Christian Kullmann aptly put it, the chemical industry of the future is at stake: “Without us there would be no electric cars, without us there would be no wind turbines, without us there would be no lightweight construction, without us there would be no vaccine against the coronavirus pandemic” [1].

While the perceived harmfulness of the status quo is suggested by an initiative of German chemists aimed at “rethinking chemistry” [22, 23] we believe we must go further. We must reclaim the sovereignty of interpretation, chelate the information space, and eradicate chemophobia [8, 9]. The emergence of artificial intelligence and its potential for education, creativity, and communication offers us unique opportunities in this sense.

Just as the Enlightenment emancipated man and made him free, but at the same time challenged him to continually educate and improve himself to succeed in an open society, we are now in a similar situation. As experience in the application of artificial intelligence shows, to effectively utilize its full potential, one needs to be well versed in the field and be able to evaluate the results of AI and put them into a broader context. Artificial intelligence will provide qualitative growth, but it requires an appropriate response. And that goes for chemists as well as everyone else.

In search of a new Paracelsus

According to the British weekly The Economist [24], AI could help scientific progress by accelerating the pace of research and discovery, and The New York Times notes that this year, “A.I. will grow at a rapid pace, becoming more powerful and extending into the physical world” [25]. The American newspaper quotes an industry executive supporting this prediction as saying, “It’s inevitable.” And Miriam Meckel, quoted by the German magazine Der Spiegel [26], believes that “AI will help us reach a new level of civilization” by allowing “knowledge to spread around the world.” Does this mean that AI is a phenomenon destined for success?

The rapid development of AI does not allow for deep thinking about it. This makes it difficult for society to maintain an overview and make the right decisions. But Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), one of the key figures of the Enlightenment, can be remembered as a possible reference point. In his Critique of Pure Reason (Fig. 2), he condemns the practices of those who extol the disregard for all artificial means as the true method of expanding knowledge. As an example, he cites the claim of such people “that we can determine the size and distance of the moon with greater certainty by the naked eye than by mathematical devices” [27]. The famous philosopher’s opinion may serve as a suitable inspiration for finding the right solution at a time when AI is changing the way we organize our work, conduct research, and process the results. Consider, for example, the enthusiastic reviews of those working with AI to automate clinical trials for new drugs. “In terms of application,” says one expert, “it’s like a kid in a candy store” [28]. Clearly, in the same revolutionary way, we need to change the way we communicate with the public.

Fig. 2
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Title page of the first edition of Kant’s groundbreaking Critique of Pure Reason from 1791, and a portrait of Kant by Johann Friedrich Schleuen from 1773

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In his article Chymie ou chimie [29] for the seminal work of the Enlightenment, the French Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, the chemist and contemporary of Kant Gabriel François Venel (1723–1775) [30] describes the state of chemistry at the time. It turns out that it is not very different from the way chemistry is perceived today. The French chemist argues that “chemistry is little cultivated among us” and “spread only very mediocrely, even among scientists.” According to Venel, chemists live “almost in isolation in the midst of a vast multitude who take little interest in their craft and expect almost nothing from their industry.” Venel awaits the emergence of a “new Paracelsus” (Fig. 3). This man, “a skillful, enthusiastic, and daring chemist,” would bring about a revolution that would “destroy unfavorable impressions” and “put chemistry in the rank it deserves.” If Lavoisier played this role then [31], today we are still waiting in vain for him. But we argue this new Paracelsus, who will emancipate chemistry once again, could be artificial intelligence. AI will not just accelerate chemical research, thus enabling us, chemists, to find quicker solutions to the problems facing humanity. At the same time AI will enhance our communication and educational possibilities and, as a result, will help us to break free from the shackles of chemophobia. As a result, it will help free society from the anti-chemical prejudice created by chemophobia.

Fig. 3
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Title page of the third volume of the Encyclopédie of 1753, in which Venel’s entry on chemistry was published. The importance of chemistry was to be emphasized by its inclusion in the sciences allegorically depicted on the Encyclopédie frontispiece by the French engraver Charles-Nicolas Cochin in 1764 [32]. Chemistry is depicted here as a woman operating a distillation apparatus in a company with optics and botany. An excerpt from Venel’s entry on chemistry, in which he expresses his desire for a new Paracelsus to appear (shortened translation in text)

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AI and chemistry

Generative AI has quickly become one of the symbols of our technologically advanced era. However, there is still no consensus on the definition of AI. According to Wang [33], the term AI is commonly used in different senses depending on the preferences, needs and interests of individual users. As a result, mainstream AI as a field lacks not only a common theoretical foundation but also a consensus on the overall research objective.

The roots of AI go back to the 1950s. Although its origin is linked to the names of several leading experts of the time, including the legendary British mathematician with a tragic fate Alan Turing (1912–1954) [34], the phrase “artificial intelligence” was coined by John McCarthy [35]. Nearly thirty years later, he summarized his view of AI as follows: “AI is concerned with methods of achieving goals in situations in which the information available has a certain complex character. The methods that have to be used are related to the problem presented by the situation and are similar whether the problem solver is human, a Martian, or a computer program” [36].

For many years, AI was known to the general public mostly from the realm of science fiction [37, 38]. This has gradually changed as people increasingly began to use, and therefore adopt, a wide range of devices and services based on AI applications, for example, internet search engines, smartphones, and the IoT – Internet of Things [39]. Whether they realize it or not, artificial intelligence has become an integral part of their lives.

Over the past five years, we have experienced a period known as the “new wave” of AI or the “new spring” of AI [40]. This has been made possible by a confluence of three circumstances: the ongoing increase of the brute force of computers combined with the availability of large digital datasets and the replacement of the formal logic-based approaches to AI with various kinds of machine learning algorithms. However, it has only gained widespread interest due to the emergence of generative AI platforms, chatbots [41]. In addition to the media frenzy caused by the emergence of chatbots, we have seen unprecedented interest in this AI application, in almost every level of society. Thus, the passive perception of the existence of AI has turned into a mixture of expectation on the one hand and apprehension on the other. This is despite the fact that many users have not progressed beyond entering trivial prompts.

This raises the need for further large-scale research into this phenomenon. And to build on existing research, possibly in all areas of society, thus enabling the seamless integration of AI into their practices from, e.g., pedagogy [42], urban planning [43], and gender issues [44], to chemistry, where AI is revolutionizing, for example, data analysis in analytical chemistry [45], drug discovery processes [46], the analysis and prediction of water quality parameters [47], estimating toxicity [48] or chemical education [49]. Similarly, AI literacy needs to be worked on hard, since it has evolved from a laudable subject of interest for enthusiasts [39] to a societal necessity [50]. The agenda is to provide a common understanding of what AI is, how to use it most effectively, and what its potential implications for society are.

It is by properly harnessing the potential of AI in chemical research and putting it into practice that we will be able to bring additional arguments for chemistry into the dialog that needs to be had with society. We argue that it is AI that can contribute to this dialog. However, this requires a deep understanding of all the possibilities that AI-mediated communication offers.

AI in the fight against chemophobia

One of the biggest challenges for science communication in general and the communication of chemistry in particular is generative AI. Its integration into mainstream communication has a number of positive aspects, but it can also have a downside. Generative AI itself is value-neutral and always depends on the intentions of the individual user. Therefore, chemists should take the initiative to utilize it for the benefit of their science and humanity. Through the effective use of generative AI, they will be able to gradually reverse years of an inadequately low perception of their science. Thus, they will also be able to address the problem of chemophobia, which greatly undermines its potential and is extremely detrimental to the influx of new talent to the field of chemistry.

The fight against chemophobia has always been about dealing with the human factor. The relatively small chemical community has had to confront the chemophobic behavior and thinking of much of society. At the same time, it has not been able to communicate the fundamental importance of chemistry to the public effectively enough. The main reason for this has been the insufficient number of chemists willing to engage in time-consuming and physically exhausting confrontations with the hydra of chemophobia. This situation may now be about to change.

Generative AI is now able to make up for scientists’ lack of media proficiency and enable everyone to be ready to communicate about science. The result could be an almost infinite number of dialogs on scientific topics that only require an interest in communication. Consequently, it is the new capacity for multiplicative communication that could play an important role in changing the status of chemistry in society.

However, the active involvement of all chemists in communication will also be an appropriate response to the further development of chemophobia. In predicting the future development of chemophobia, we expect it to continue to grow as the number of AI users increases. Indeed, the power of generative AI will eventually be utilized by an increasing number of those who currently hold chemophobic views. The result may be a clash of narratives. Nevertheless, drawing attention to these views in the public space and placing them in an appropriate scientific context through AI will reduce their impact.

Chemists can draw inspiration from Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier (1743–1794) to energize their communication efforts [31, 51]. Just as Lavoisier was not afraid to discard the then outdated phlogiston theory and reform chemical nomenclature, so he put forward a revolutionary concept in his textbook Traité élémentaire de chimie of 1789 (Fig. 4). He changed the style of presentation and presented the theory in such a way that it was accessible to those for whom it was intended. As a result, he ensured that his ideas were disseminated and recognized not only in France. Translations into many European languages ensured that his concept of chemistry was also recognized throughout the continent.

Fig. 4
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The first edition of Antoine Lavoisier’s groundbreaking 1789 textbook Traité élémentaire de chimie and his portrait (engraving by W. C. Sharp after J. L. David)

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After all, Lavoisier knew that “we should trust nothing but facts: they are given to us by nature and cannot deceive us.” Without realizing it himself, he warned of the dangers of chemophobia and rejection of science and scientific knowledge in general, as he warned of the dangers of “imagination … which always wanders beyond the truth, combined with the ego and self-confidence we are so prone to indulge in.” As Lavoisier noted, “[it] leads us to draw conclusions which do not follow directly from the facts so that we become somewhat interested in deceiving ourselves.”

It is remarkable, but not surprising, that 235 years after the publication of Lavoisier’s textbook, we have to find ways to appeal to the public’s imagination and bring it back to the facts. Thus, with the help of generative AI, we as a collective body can ourselves become the new Paracelsus. Table 1 provides a sample of AI chatbot responses to the question of how to address chemophobia. As a result, we can liberate chemistry from chemophobia and unlock its potential to develop the new drugs and materials needed to secure humanity’s future.

Table 1 AI chatbots suggestions to the prompt “How to reverse the unfavorable development in the spread of chemophobia?” (prompt entered on 12th May 2024)
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Conclusions

Generative artificial intelligence opens up a wide range of opportunities to improve and enhance chemical communication with virtually any possible target audience. At the same time, it makes it possible to reach out to individuals and tailor our communication with them. They can now be matched according to education level, life experience, depth of interest, and time availability. Despite the new communication opportunities available to chemists, we must not forget to prioritize personal, ideally repeated, contact with those who are interested in our science. As Kanta Dihal points out [52], it is long-term interpersonal communication that builds trust between scientists and the public.