A complex problem about superbugs that took microbiologists a decade to solve has been solved by AI in just 2 days.

Professor José R Penadés and his team at Imperial College London (UK) have spent years researching and proving why some superbugs are resistant to antibiotics.

He gave "AI co-scientist" - an AI tool developed by Google - a brief question about the core problem he was researching. After just 48 hours, the AI ​​came to the same conclusion that took his team 10 years to solve.

Sharing with the BBC, Professor Penadés expressed surprise at this discovery, because his research had never been published and could not be found on public data sources.

He even emailed Google to ask if their system had access to his personal computer to decode the superbug so quickly. The tech giant said it did not.

Professor Penadés said the AI ​​tool came to the same conclusions as his research and suggested four other hypotheses. All of them were plausible.

"What's amazing is that one of them never crossed our minds, and we're now working on it," he said.

The team has been trying to understand how some superbugs - bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics - are formed.

Their hypothesis is that superbugs can form a "tail" from different viruses, helping them spread between species.

Professor Penadés likens this to super bacteria possessing a set of "keys" that allow them to move from one "house" to another, that is, from one host to another.

What's special is that this hypothesis was developed entirely by his research team, has never been published anywhere, and no one in the team has disclosed information about this bacteria to the outside.

That's why he decided to use this work to test Google's new AI tool. The results just two days later, AI came up with a number of hypotheses - in which the top answer was the mechanism that the research team spent years discovering.

Will AI change science?

AI is creating a lot of controversy. Supporters believe that this technology will promote scientific progress, while others are worried that it could replace many jobs.

From the results of the AI-solved superbug study, Professor Penadés admits that anxiety about AI is the first reaction of many people, but he says that "when you think about it, it's actually an incredibly powerful tool".

The team believes that AI will play a major role in the future of science.

"I believe that this will change science, absolutely," he says. "I feel like I'm standing in front of something spectacular, and I'm very happy to be a part of it".

"It's like a chance to play a big game - I feel like I'm finally playing in a Champions League match with this technology".