Chemicals and materials / Chemical research and development
BASF: Searching research literature and patents
- Company
- BASF
- Country
- Germany
- Adoption stage
- In operation
- Source published
- In use from
- Date basis
- The date the source was published. It can differ from the date adoption started.
- How the source was checked
- Read the full source text
The work problem
BASF has built up research reports and patents over 160 years. On top of that come the millions of patents filed worldwide each year. The source explains that this is why even a simple search for information or background becomes a highly complex task.
Technology and data
QKnows is a tool built to search literature, patents and BASF's research reports in one application. It was built to fit BASF's global research and development organisation. When a user asks in natural language, it sweeps a database of more than 400 million documents to find the relevant knowledge. The first version came out in April 2023 as a chatbot for BASF research knowledge. It now has a reasoning mode and a deep research mode, so users can go back and forth over search results, documents and sets of documents and dig into complex scientific topics. Users write in whichever language they want.
Results
Literature, patents and internal research reports that had been scattered in several places are now searched in one place. BASF explained that users can mine relevant knowledge faster and more efficiently. It said QKnows gives researchers a competitive edge and accelerates innovation across the whole internal research and development organisation.
Limits and open questions
The source does not give figures such as how much search time was cut or the number of users. There is also no basis in the source for saying that the success rate of materials development rose.
Sources
- Putting AI to work: five BASF success storiesbasf.com, Accessed
Compiled from public sources. These are not results from ATF Works customers.