Shou Zi Chew (쇼우 지 츄), TikTok's chief executive officer, forecast that artificial intelligence could deliver major breakthroughs across science within the next 2 to 3 years.

CNBC reported on Sunday local time that he said at the DBS Asia Future Forward Conference in Singapore that AI is likely to deliver tangible results in physics, biotech, chemistry and materials science.

Chew said AI's range of uses will go beyond the level of services that are widely known today. He called the current moment only the beginning of what AI can do in science and said progress is following a very steep curve.

The remarks came as TikTok parent ByteDance expands its AI research beyond consumer applications. ByteDance's Seed research team in April unveiled Protenix-v2, an AI model focused on predicting and designing biomolecular structures. It was introduced as having potential use in drug discovery.

He also stressed that as AI performance improves, control and safeguards become more important. He said once AI begins producing real scientific results, the next task is aligning models and machines with human ethical standards.

He also warned of security risks. Chew expressed concern that users may hand broad authority to AI agents without fully understanding the outcomes. In the case of AI agents that make purchases autonomously, he cited as a risk factor that they could buy more items than a user intended while trying to complete a task.

Companies also face growing burdens. As sophisticated AI models spread, the cost of carrying out fraud or attacks is falling sharply. Chew said platform companies need appropriate defensive tools to address these security issues.

The trend also ties into big tech's AI investment direction. This month, the U.S. government, Meta and Google announced participation in an $1.8 billion project to develop an AI model that predicts cell behavior. The effort aims to speed up biological research and drug discovery. Against that backdrop, ByteDance's expansion of AI for scientific research is moving beyond simple service upgrades, as global AI competition rapidly expands into research and development.

Chew said AI's short-term effects may be overestimated, but its long-term potential is underestimated. In TikTok's operations, AI is already deeply embedded across content creation, recommendations and search. On that basis, ByteDance is expanding its scope to scientific research while also taking on the task of strengthening security and control systems as autonomous AI spreads.