Artificial Intelligence: An Analytical Tool with Immense Potential

Stéphanie Doyle: Artificial intelligence generates a lot of uncertainty, but in research, its impact is already real. What is your vision for AI in your mandate?

Carole Jabet: I view AI as a tool with an incredible analytical capacity that a human brain cannot have alone. It’s not an end in itself; it’s an accelerator. In health, it will allow me to make correlations that are impossible today: cross-referencing health data with environmental data, demographics, income, education. These are the health determinants that we don’t know how to relate well. We always do it two by two, whereas with AI, we can analyze everything simultaneously.

I recently saw an FRQ-FNRS project in Belgium on antibiotic resistance. We’re unable to find new classes of antibiotics. With AI, I have a tool to generate a battery of molecules at the speed of light. The idea is to explore all possible molecules on the planet and identify which ones could have antimicrobial potential. Conceptually, it’s infinity that we’re manipulating, and that fascinates me. Behind this, there’s a human side: we can’t leave society exposed to this risk, even if the pharmaceutical market isn’t interested.

S.D.: And the validation of all that?

C.J.: That’s the crucial issue. We can always find correlations, but they must be validated. Scientific journals now refuse articles without integrated validation. If a link appears in a database, it must be verified in another cohort. Otherwise, we risk creating false conclusions and wasting enormous amounts of time. That’s where critical thinking becomes fundamental.

Critical Thinking: A Skill to Reinvent

C.J.: With AI, we have no choice: we must review our training processes starting from secondary school and cultivate critical thinking. Our role becomes different. It’s no longer about collecting and analyzing, but about critiquing, validating, and asking challenging questions.

The problem is that AI removes what used to be the learning period for young professionals: data collection, analysis, creating the first PowerPoint. These tasks had a training capacity. If AI does all that, how do we learn?

S.D.: But if you don’t learn how to learn, can you really critique and analyze?

C.J.: That’s exactly why we must cultivate critical thinking. We can learn to question. We need to teach them to develop reflexes to validate what they’re given.

In my ideal world, it would go in the opposite direction of the current publication race. Developing questioning and validation takes time. The number of publications should stagnate, or even decrease, so we can focus on quality rather than quantity. The entire scientific community agrees that we can no longer function with quantitative metrics. Now, we need to put it into action.

Concrete Projects Transforming Healthcare

S.D.: Can you give a concrete example of a research project using AI that has made a difference?

C.J.: My favorite is Nadia Larici’s project at Polytechnique, which I discovered in 2017-2018. It’s a logistics project in radiotherapy. The question was: how to optimize machine time and human resources for treatments in the Quebec network? It was being done with pencil and eraser with several complex parameters: new patients, patients in treatment, human resources, machine time.

AI created an algorithm now used in several facilities. She even created a spin-off and extended the project beyond radiotherapy, centering everything on the patient from their home to the hospital.

The Challenges of Healthcare Transformation

S.D.: What are your main current challenges?

C.J.: Our collective challenge is the transformation of health approaches, not just improving the system. We need to flatten the curve of what it costs to have health problems. Right now, we get sick and it creates a spike in expenses. If we could spread out these spikes, aiming for optimal maintenance of health status through prevention and education, we would find better efficiency.

My challenge is to mobilize research as the locomotive of this transformation. We need to harness the ecosystem so that we focus on prevention, health promotion, and bring in new actors: urban planners, environmentalists, community organizations.

My personal challenge? I lack the time to step back and articulate this challenge and bring more people along with us. We need to slow down, but the tools take us too far, too fast. I need time to think and mobilize my team.

S.D.: It’s the same problem as with AI: we need time to reflect in order to change the model.

C.J.: Exactly. But there are also incredible opportunities. The next generation, notably. Our intersectoral student committee shows that this generation wants to harness research to solve societal challenges. They care about impact, not just generating knowledge. It’s our job to create the conditions for them to succeed.

That’s where Pro-Santé comes in, our initiative with Montréal In Vivo, FRQ, Novo Nordisk, MEIE and MSSS. We’re changing the ways of doing things. A student in the lab can be exposed to economic development, community work, social innovation. We’re opening up the range of curiosities. It’s multi-stakeholder, field and action, co-design where we share our responsibilities.

S.D.: Was research more disconnected from the field before?

C.J.: Not disconnected, but more compartmentalized. Those who did action research stayed in their domain, like those in the laboratory. Now, we’re becoming more porous. The next generation will want to do both lab and field work. This will translate into our evaluations and our recognition of contributions. If we celebrate quality rather than quantity, it will change behaviors.

Sustainable Health: A New Economic Paradigm

S.D.: What initiatives particularly excite you for their impact on Quebecers?

C.J.: My entire Sustainable Health programming, launched three years ago. It’s not “exercise and eat well.” It’s the sustainability of our health interventions: can I have equitable interventions that we can continue to finance, and that allow the entire population to have the same access?

S.D.: Give me concrete examples.

C.J.: Urban planning: where you put grocery stores, how you create walkable sidewalks, an accessible public transit network. That’s the foundation: healthy eating and equitable mobility.

And it can be very technological too. An ÉTS project I love: using earbuds to identify body sounds (heart, lungs…) and detect a problem early with signal processing. In 2020, that seemed like science fiction. Today, my AirPods already measure my heart rate.

What really pleases me is demonstrating that prevention and sustainable health are not just a socio-health gain, but real economic development. I’m convinced there’s an economic sector behind it. Prevention solutions are a product, a service that can be placed in a corporate structure.

S.D.: Is the population ready to share their data?

C.J.: Our survey with Genome Quebec clearly demonstrated that yes, if it’s done well, responsibly, with transparent information feedback. We’ll update it to verify if the cursor has moved and better communicate that the population is in favor.

Advice for the Next Generation

S.D.: What do you tell young people who want a strategic role?

C.J.: Stay curious and open. It’s the debate on different points of view that generates solutions. Accept to debate to leave space for different points of view: you’ll find solutions you wouldn’t have found otherwise.

Learn to negotiate, not to negotiate agreements, but to function in complex compromise situations, with diversity, where we don’t speak the same language. You’ll be exposed to the academic world, business, decision-makers, politics, civil society. Negotiation helps you create win-win situations. These are essential new skills.

And absolutely maintain rigor. What makes an individual valuable in research is not so much their specific domain of expertise, but their rigor. This capacity is fundamental in a scientist.

If they maintain their rigor, they’ll maintain their ethics. They’ll help fight misinformation and tell it like it is. They’ll do it by negotiating, understanding others’ interests, listening, but they’ll hold the line.