Broken Peer Review, AI, and Worms — with Oded Rechavi

Oded Rechavi is a biologist at Tel Aviv University and the co-founder of QED, a company building AI to review scientific work. He's also spent years studying worms.We start with what's wrong with peer review and grant funding: why it takes years to publish, why reviewers are often your own competitors, and why the whole thing is locked to an economic model that rewards publishing more papers, not better ones. Oded explains why he doesn't call QED "peer review" at all, and what it would take to actually validate science instead of just stamping it.Then we get into the biology. C. elegans has exactly 959 cells, every one of them named, and a fully mapped brain. Oded's lab studies how a worm's experiences get passed to its offspring through RNA rather than DNA — meaning what happens to a worm in its lifetime can change its descendants. We also talk about using ancient DNA to reassemble the Dead Sea Scrolls, what AI can and can't do for biology, and why he wants to build an "Ironman suit" for researchers rather than replace them.00:00 Intro01:35 Why scientific publishing is broken04:02 Years to publish, and what it costs science07:20 Bad reviewers, conflicts of interest, and the money10:47 Why preprints don't fix it15:37 How AI conferences handle review22:07 Conferences vs. journals — does slow review help?25:22 Building QED: review, not peer review30:02 Tracking a paper from idea to submission33:11 What writing a grant actually involves35:00 The ERC reviewer crisis37:06 Tailoring feedback to your field41:48 Switching to biology44:30 Every cell has a name: inside C. elegans46:28 Inheritance without DNA48:16 What the worm "thinks" changes its offspring51:58 Reassembling the Dead Sea Scrolls with ancient DNA56:07 Psychedelics and worms58:36 Can AI run the research itself?1:04:49 Automation vs. validation1:07:12 The origin of life1:08:49 Why people reject AI-written work1:16:18 Will humans still have a role?1:17:39 Wrap-upMusic:"Kid Kodi" - Blue Dot Sessions - via Free Music Archive - CC BY-NC 4.0.About: The Information Bottleneck is hosted by Ravid Shwartz-Ziv and Allen Roush, featuring in-depth conversations with leading AI researchers about the ideas shaping the future of machine learning.