Robot Makes Scientific Discovery Entirely On Its Own

Posted by Alex in Science & Tech on April 5, 2009 at 12:26 am


And so it has begun: scientists have created a robotic system that has made novel scientific discovery without any human input:

Scientists designed "Adam" to carry out the entire scientific process on its own: formulating hypotheses, designing and running experiments, analyzing data, and deciding which experiments to run next.

"It’s a major advance," says David Waltz of the Center for Computational Learning Systems at Columbia University. "Science is being done here in a way that incorporates artificial intelligence. It’s automating a part of the scientific process that hasn’t been automated in the past."

[...]

Adam’s British designers, led by Ross King at Aberystwyth University in Wales, acknowledge that the robot’s discoveries have been "of a modest kind" thus far. Its proving ground as a scientist has been the genome of baker’s yeast, a popular laboratory species. Baker’s yeast is one of the best understood organisms, but 10 to 15 percent of its roughly 6,000 genes have unknown functions. The scientists hoped Adam could shed light on some of these mystery genes.

I, for one, welcome our new robot scientist overlords: Link


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10 comments to "Robot Makes Scientific Discovery Entirely On Its Own"

  1. Kalel
    April 5th, 2009 at 1:59 am

    But they still don't have one that can open a pod bay door.

  2. John
    April 5th, 2009 at 10:11 am

    This can't end well.

    Merry Christmas from Chiron Beta Prime
    Where we've been working in a mine
    For our robot overlords
    Did I say 'overlords'?
    I meant protectors!

  3. BartC3
    April 5th, 2009 at 10:58 am

    " Until a robot or a computer offs itself 'cause it thinks its too fat I'm not gonna worry about artificial intelligence."

  4. Christophe
    April 5th, 2009 at 12:57 pm

    Matrix!

  5. whitcwa
    April 5th, 2009 at 5:07 pm

    As an electronic technician with robot repair experience, they'll kill me last!
    Or first...

  6. Bryce Rasmussen
    April 5th, 2009 at 7:57 pm

    And there goes the elitism of science...at this rate, Wall-E will be seen as prophetic.

  7. stormie24
    April 5th, 2009 at 9:29 pm

    have these people ever watched battlestar gallactica??! I mean, come on!!

  8. Ajan
    April 6th, 2009 at 12:07 am

    Hope they've programmed it in such a way that Humans are the Over lords, or its gonna be Judgment Day!!

  9. just a guy
    April 6th, 2009 at 3:07 pm

    Artificial Intelligence is a complex illusion. As one who studied and practiced it, I know this. Trust me, we have a long way to go before machines actually 'think'. As of now, human engineers and programmers are just very good at making machines that *appear* to think (even to other scientists).

    The process in which AI works is different than normal progammed behavior, but they they are still only capeable of operating within the designed parameters. (and in cases like this one, those parameters are designed to have the machine come up with a hypothesis on a give problem, and experiment with it, etc.. Basically, it seems to run a simulation of the scientific method).

    Knowing what I do, I'm not too concerned about AI going crazy. What may *actually* go awry are the organic computers, which utilize biological cells as their processors. Granted, I dont know much about these computers, but... any living stucture has a chance to adapt, evolve, mutuate.

  10. Crimson
    August 14th, 2009 at 7:48 pm

    machines cannot preform the scientific method.

    they cannot determine the diference between what is not a problem and what is.

    give a robot 3 perceptions:
    vision
    hearing
    touch

    and then connect those to:
    a speaker and biotic movement devices

    no programing, thats it

    also give it a hardrive of like 3k terabytes or something


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