Machine Learning Algorithm Guides Catalyst Choices for Magnesium‐Catalyzed Asymmetric Reactions

Abstract

Organic‐chemical literature encompasses large numbers of catalysts and reactions they can effect. Many of these examples are published merely to document the catalysts’ scope but do not necessarily guarantee that a given catalyst is “optimal” – in terms of yield or enantiomeric excess – for a particular reaction. This paper describes a Machine Learning model that aims to improve such catalyst‐reaction assignments based on the carefully curated literature data. As we show here for the case of asymmetric magnesium catalysis, this model achieves relatively high accuracy and offers out of‐the‐box predictions successfully validated by experiment, e.g., in synthetically demanding asymmetric reductions or Michael additions.