{"id":20492,"date":"2026-04-28T19:04:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T19:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/20492\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T19:04:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T19:04:09","slug":"cas-built-an-agentic-ai-named-newton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/20492\/","title":{"rendered":"CAS built an agentic AI named Newton"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"article-content\">\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-content\">This month, CAS, a division of the American Chemical Society specializing in scientific knowledge management, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cas.org\/press-releases\/meet-cas-newton-agentic-ai-built-for-science\" shape=\"rect\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">announced the launch<\/a> of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cas.org\/solutions\/cas-newton\" shape=\"rect\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">CAS Newton<\/a>, a conversational agentic artificial intelligence designed for scientific investigation. Newton is rooted in the organization\u2019s highly structured collections of literature and data, spanning chemistry, biology, materials science, and intellectual property.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-content\">\u201cWe don&#8217;t look at Newton as just pure AI, right? Newton is a marriage of AI and peer-reviewed, proven science. And only CAS is uniquely qualified to create that marriage,\u201d says Jian Wu, interim vice president of product management at CAS, citing its long history of curating scientific information.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-content\">Newton can be used within <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cas.org\/solutions\/cas-scifinder-discovery-platform\/cas-scifinder\/ai-capabilities\" shape=\"rect\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">SciFinder<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cas.org\/solutions\/biofinder\/ai-for-drug-discovery\" shape=\"rect\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">BioFinder<\/a>, in addition to use as a standalone interface. And CAS is working on secure integrations for organizations to use the tool alongside their proprietary data, a development that will be announced soon, Wu says.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-content\">Among other <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cas.org\/resources\/webinar\/agentic-ai-cas-scifinder\" shape=\"rect\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">scientific capabilities<\/a>, Newton can perform spectra prediction, structure search, and functional-group reactivity prediction. The AI uses a multi-agent framework to pull together the content and tools needed for the subject matter at hand, says Andrea Jacobs, CAS director of data analytics.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-content\">One application of Newton is drug discovery. A user could inquire about the chemical reactions needed to optimize a lead compound within a specific scaffold and having metabolic issues in part of its structure, Jacobs says. \u201cBeing able to ask that type of question and not just have that be like, here&#8217;s 72 search-result sets that you&#8217;re going to have to sift through and think about which parts actually matter, but actually get a response that&#8217;s directly answering that sophisticated multipart question\u2014it&#8217;s transformative.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-content\">According to <a href=\"https:\/\/cen.acs.org\/acs-news\/acs-meeting-news\/CAS-approaches-artificial-intelligence-level\/102\/web\/2024\/08\" shape=\"rect\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">CAS<\/a>, user inquiries won\u2019t be used for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cas.org\/resources\/article\/training-transparency-world-ai\" shape=\"rect\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">AI training<\/a>, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cas.org\/legal\/ethical-artificial-intelligence\" shape=\"rect\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">infrastructure is private<\/a>, and all output can be audited. Still, users of any AI <a href=\"https:\/\/cen.acs.org\/physical-chemistry\/computational-chemistry\/AI-doesnt-know-depict-chemistry\/103\/i8\" shape=\"rect\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">would need to verify its conclusions<\/a>. \u201cIt&#8217;s really dangerous for a scientist to live in a space where an answer looks like it might be right but isn&#8217;t grounded in trustworthy scientific information,\u201d Jacobs says, adding that \u201cspecialist AI like CAS Newton really can connect the dots in a way that nonspecialist tools can&#8217;t.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"article-content\">To avoid hallucinations, CAS limits Newton to working from curated sets of knowledge and performs post-evaluations to assess its output, she says. \u201cOf course, AI needs to be used responsibly. You know, <a href=\"https:\/\/cen.acs.org\/business\/informatics\/Artificial-intelligence-great-job-maker\/103\/i3\" shape=\"rect\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">scientists&#8217; jobs<\/a> don&#8217;t go away by virtue of AI being good at connecting the dots in certain aspects of science.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>            <a href=\"https:\/\/cen.acs.org\/staffDirectory\/Sydney-Smith.html\" tabindex=\"-1\" aria-hidden=\"true\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/2025-sydney-smith.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"img-fluid\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\n        Chemical &amp; Engineering News<\/p>\n<p>          ISSN 0009-2347<\/p>\n<p>          Copyright \u00a9<br \/>\n            2026 American Chemical Society<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a0 This month, CAS, a division of the American Chemical Society specializing in scientific knowledge management, announced the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20493,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[14409,7973,24,25,855,14412,14410,14411],"class_list":{"0":"post-20492","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ai","8":"tag-acs-news","9":"tag-agentic","10":"tag-ai","11":"tag-artificial-intelligence","12":"tag-cas","13":"tag-cas-newton","14":"tag-chemical-abstracts-service","15":"tag-newton"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}