Robot scientist becomes first machine to discover new scientific knowledge
April 2, 2009Scientists have created a Robot Scientist which the researchers believe is the first machine to have independently discovered new scientific knowledge. The robot, called Adam, is a computer system that fully automates the scientific process. The work will be published tomorrow (03 April 2009) in the journal Science.
Prof Ross King, who led the research at Aberystwyth University, said: "Ultimately we hope to have teams of human and robot scientists working together in laboratories".
The scientists at Aberystwyth University and the University of Cambridge designed Adam to carry out each stage of the scientific process automatically without the need for further human intervention. The robot has discovered simple but new scientific knowledge about the genomics of the baker's yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, an organism that scientists use to model more complex life systems. The researchers have used separate manual experiments to confirm that Adam's hypotheses were both novel and correct.
"Because biological organisms are so complex it is important that the details of biological experiments are recorded in great detail. This is difficult and irksome for human scientists, but easy for Robot Scientists."
Using artificial intelligence, Adam hypothesised that certain genes in baker's yeast code for specific enzymes which catalyse biochemical reactions in yeast. The robot then devised experiments to test these predictions, ran the experiments using laboratory robotics, interpreted the results and repeated the cycle.
Adam is a still a prototype, but Prof King's team believe that their next robot, Eve, holds great promise for scientists searching for new drugs to combat diseases such as malaria and schistosomiasis, an infection caused by a type of parasitic worm in the tropics.
Prof King continued: "If science was more efficient it would be better placed to help solve society's problems. One way to make science more efficient is through automation. Automation was the driving force behind much of the 19th and 20th century progress, and this is likely to continue."
Prof Douglas Kell, BBSRC Chief Executive, said: "Computers play a fundamental role in the scientific process, which is becoming increasingly automated, for instance in drug design and DNA sequencing. This has led to more scientific data, increasingly available on the web, which in turn requires an increased use of computers to analyse these data. Robot scientists could provide a useful tool for managing such data and knowledge, making scientific procedures easier and more efficient. This kind of learning will become even more important as we move further towards integrative and predictive biology in the era of Web 2.0 and the Semantic Web."
Source: Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council
May 04, 2005 |
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GIVE ME A BREAK, I am am heavily in to robotics, and love a new technology when it's designed but the designer of this silly thing needs to stop jerking him self off and admit that what is essentially a modified pick and place robot is not special in this decade.
Adam and Eve? Try harder.
Would we in the future then still need scientists or will we rely on computers for everything?
Eventually we would believe whatever our tools tell us. In the beginning we will check all new findings and make sure they are correct. But when we get used to the idea that the machines are always correct ...
Technology and science are supposed to leapfrog off of each other, and the more intelligent professionals who read breakthrough ideas, the quicker they can be built upon.
ok... maybe not.
I assume it was prof. King who perceived that 'something scientific' was discovered, instead of the machine. The machine was only an instrument to the Professor, like so many other machines. This is not yet HAL.
My best shot:
"Only a machine with human hardware can have human consciousness, which includes consciousness about observations being discoveries or not".
This system was used to do complex route work that is tedious and difficult to manually correlate into a form for analysis by a human.
The machine completed this onerous task and came up with a value according to it's programming..and acted on it in the programmed manner.
Really, a complex bit of programming by a smart group or person..but not AI.
Not AI at all. Someone trained it to specific things when encountering specific findings..and it acted on it. Real differentiated musing is a completely different thing altogether.
Once the basics of that function have been transferred to a software model..and I don't think it is that far away..we will have something so close to us with regards to how we 'input/output' that it will be indisitnguishable to all of us (via interaction, our only method) from the response pattern of any given human being..and just as complex.
As Arthur C Clarke said (to paraphrase), "any science sufficiently advanced from our own frame of reference can and will be seen as 'magic" and for that reason, this AI too will be felt by the human edifice as being 'intelligent' and 'human like'.
This is the trend and it is going to get there-sooner or later.
Hollywierd has made the mere though of A.I. something along the lines of a Stephen King horror story, as such it (A.I) should be tempured with caution. Additional consideration should be given to what happens to the human scientist, laborers, and adminsitrators once we start automating with more robotic and A.I. systems?