5 ms·

Robot Scientist Adam makes discovery that has eluded human scientists for years.

79 points by bkudria 17y ago

pmichaud 17y ago
Neat. Once you have a very clear problem statement, you can write a program that can perform experiments and analyze the results. It's a step.
scott_s 17y ago
The headline is sexy, but I think it gets the main point wrong. The first sentence in the article that, I think, is the proper lead is: As artificial intelligence continues to evolve however, we are beginning to see the introduction of robotics in many “high-skill” fields such as research and medicine. The point isn't that a robot was able to make a discovery that human researchers could not. The point is that biologists who do this kind of research will be able to work at a higher level of abstraction: something that used to require manual work on their part can now be automated. We don't replace the biology researchers, rather we've improved their tools.
- ippisl 17y ago
  If we assume the robots cost money , and research funds are limited , and the robot's research is important, there's no reason why it won't "replace" biologists.
  - scott_s 17y ago
    I mean replace in the sense that we will still need biologists to do the science. The robot can not do science on its own, it's only a tool that scientists will use. It might replace pure lab-workers who just do grunt work. So it's possible undergrad bio students won't be able to use that as an "in" into a research group. Also, biology labs are already expensive to equip. This development doesn't change that.
    - scotty79 17y ago
      It designed what experiments to commence to solve the problem. No biology undergrad was able to do it so far for "orphan" yeast enzymes. I think this is significant and that such automated experiment design and execution might replace some researchers.
      - nollidge 17y ago
        The article did not say that it "designed" anything.
        ErrantX 17y ago
        Actually it says that in the first few paragraphs; and the rest of the article heavily implies the same. Reading more on the original sources and I think it's a bit of both worlds. The robot was given a set of initial data plus the problem it was facing and it iteratively created experiments - at each stage deciding which experiment to do next to improve it's "knowledge" and progress towards the goal. From sciencemag.com [1]: The basis of science is the hypothetico-deductive method and the recording of experiments in sufficient detail to enable reproducibility. We report the development of Robot Scientist "Adam," which advances the automation of both. 1. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/324/5923/85 http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/324/5923/85
      - scott_s 17y ago
        I have access to the full article, and they do phrase it that the robot "designed" the experiments it carried about. But it didn't conjure these designs out of thin air. The specific experiments it performed are a result of the general rules given to it by software created by the human biologists. (Some of which was coded in Prolog, which I think is pretty darn nifty.) The amount of information they had to provide the robot was significant - both in terms of raw data and in terms of the software controlling it. All of that requires humans. I doubt tenured professors will be the ones writing the software for such robots. edit: This is what they cite as the software they used for the model: Philip G.K. Reiser, et al., Developing a Logical Model of Yeast Metabolism, http://www.ida.liu.se/ext/epa/cis/2001/024/tcover.html http://www.ida.liu.se/ext/epa/cis/2001/024/tcover.html
- bh23ha 17y ago
  The real point is that scientists (not just biologists) will be able to get more done period. We've been bringing computers and automation into science for a while now and it has made a big difference. Sometimes you need to collect A LOT of data to be able to form a theory. Sometimes you just need to try all the possibilities. A lot of science depends on that being done, and with automation now it can be done. When I say done, I don't mean it's just faster and cheaper, I mean it is FEASABLE when it wouldn't be with human labour. This a great scientific tool, think microscope, it's in that ballpark.
- Herring 17y ago
  The highest level of abstraction is lying on a beach while robots do all the work.
  - ovi256 17y ago
    Unfortunately, I think the current socio-economic system can not allow that, even if it is the logical conclusion. Of course people would still do challenging tasks (or "work"), but not for material rewards.
johnohara 17y ago
Kudos to the team that properly defined the problem and employed the use of an expert system to solve it. Not yet sentient as the title delicately alludes however. Were a Nobel Prize awarded it would still go to the team not the device. Where are we on the Kurzweil timeline btw.
- ippisl 17y ago
  Where the nobel prize goes is an interesting question. let's say that some robot discovers an important discovery , that deserves the nobel. let's also say the methods of operation of the robot are standard practice at the time of building it. and the discovery came through luck and tons of robotic work. who should win the nobel? would the robot be considered by the nobel comity ?
  - johnohara 17y ago
    That was the question posed by Hawking back in 2003(?). His assertion was that the device would have to be considered intelligent, albeit another form of intelligence, and possibly deserving of rights. It does seem as though we're getting there.
    - marciovm123 17y ago
      The classic philosopher's version of this is the Chinese Room: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room My naive understanding is that the intelligence is not in the room or the book, but in the person who wrote the book.
      - rgejman 17y ago
        What? No. This has nothing to do with the Chinese Room argument. The Chinese Room argument is about refuting the claim that reasoning according to rules can ever be considered intelligence (i.e. refuting Strong AI).
        17y ago
khelloworld 17y ago
While the robot is definitely impressive, without substantial AI in it, I dont think it qualifies to be called a 'scientist' just yet. It clearly cannot appreciate what its doing -- it might just as well have been cleaning the dishes.
- PhilipReiser 17y ago
  As a former member of this research group, I can tell you are spouting nonsense and I think you had better run along and read the paper before making derogatory comments. It's just that people and media are far more interested in seeing robots than in seeing software. FYI: I have spent the last 10 years working on algorithmic scientific method.
Estragon 17y ago
I haven't read the paper, yet, but it seems as though the article really inflates the claims for the robot's cognitive achievement. There were a set of candidate genes to test as the cause of each enzyme. This was a matter of creating a set of deletion mutants and checking whether the mutants produced the enzymes, a laborious task which would be pretty easy to automate without artificial intelligence. It does seem to be a helpful automation, though.
- hartror 17y ago
  Yeah from what the article describes it sounds like at is simplest form a nested for loop varing across a number of variables. I assume it is quite a bit more complex than that but artificial intelligence?
  - jules 17y ago
    The perception of what is artificial intelligence is changing all the time. Playing chess is just looping (and not even quite a bit more complex), but it used to be artificial intelligence.
  - PhilipReiser 17y ago
    You're wrong. Don't assume, read the article and the papers it cites.
tomkinstinch 17y ago
Very impressive, but as others have said: without AI at the helm, this is mostly a complex robot taking the place of a human technician. ( Which costs more? ) I suspect that much of the macro-scale manipulation performed by this robot (and humans) will be made obsolete in coming years by microfluidic analytic instruments.
bch 17y ago
Am I the only one who was more excited to see the link to Tron Legacy?
teeja 17y ago
I think the key point is this: "Dr. King and colleagues gave Adam a database containing information on the enzymes, the chemicals and reagents to do the experiments, and access to the yeast cultures." I imagine it would have taken a really, really smart robot about 300 years to figure that stuff out on its own. And only IF it had a reason to figure it out. Not AI ... just another Expert System. Doing exactly what it's told to, efficiently.
- PhilipReiser 17y ago
  Wrong. An expert system only draws conclusions from a knowledge base using deductive inference. This system also uses abductive inference and inductive inference. Read the paper.
dean 17y ago
"And though some may be hesitant to accept the ever-increasing roles of robots in our world, I, for one, " welcome our new robot overlords. (Sorry, but I couldn't resist that perfect segue.)
PhilipReiser 17y ago
BTW The paper was published a year ago, so this is hardly news. And the previous significant article was in Nature in 2004.

79 points by bkudria 17y ago

Neat. Once you have a very clear problem statement, you can write a program that can perform experiments and analyze the results. It's a step.

scott_s 17y ago

The headline is sexy, but I think it gets the main point wrong. The first sentence in the article that, I think, is the proper lead is: As artificial intelligence continues to evolve however, we are beginning to see the introduction of robotics in many “high-skill” fields such as research and medicine. The point isn't that a robot was able to make a discovery that human researchers could not. The point is that biologists who do this kind of research will be able to work at a higher level of abstraction: something that used to require manual work on their part can now be automated. We don't replace the biology researchers, rather we've improved their tools.

ippisl 17y ago
If we assume the robots cost money , and research funds are limited , and the robot's research is important, there's no reason why it won't "replace" biologists.
- scott_s 17y ago
  I mean replace in the sense that we will still need biologists to do the science. The robot can not do science on its own, it's only a tool that scientists will use. It might replace pure lab-workers who just do grunt work. So it's possible undergrad bio students won't be able to use that as an "in" into a research group. Also, biology labs are already expensive to equip. This development doesn't change that.
  - scotty79 17y ago
    It designed what experiments to commence to solve the problem. No biology undergrad was able to do it so far for "orphan" yeast enzymes. I think this is significant and that such automated experiment design and execution might replace some researchers.
    - nollidge 17y ago
      The article did not say that it "designed" anything.
      - ErrantX 17y ago
        Actually it says that in the first few paragraphs; and the rest of the article heavily implies the same. Reading more on the original sources and I think it's a bit of both worlds. The robot was given a set of initial data plus the problem it was facing and it iteratively created experiments - at each stage deciding which experiment to do next to improve it's "knowledge" and progress towards the goal. From sciencemag.com [1]: The basis of science is the hypothetico-deductive method and the recording of experiments in sufficient detail to enable reproducibility. We report the development of Robot Scientist "Adam," which advances the automation of both. 1. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/324/5923/85 http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/324/5923/85
    - scott_s 17y ago
      I have access to the full article, and they do phrase it that the robot "designed" the experiments it carried about. But it didn't conjure these designs out of thin air. The specific experiments it performed are a result of the general rules given to it by software created by the human biologists. (Some of which was coded in Prolog, which I think is pretty darn nifty.) The amount of information they had to provide the robot was significant - both in terms of raw data and in terms of the software controlling it. All of that requires humans. I doubt tenured professors will be the ones writing the software for such robots. edit: This is what they cite as the software they used for the model: Philip G.K. Reiser, et al., Developing a Logical Model of Yeast Metabolism, http://www.ida.liu.se/ext/epa/cis/2001/024/tcover.html http://www.ida.liu.se/ext/epa/cis/2001/024/tcover.html
bh23ha 17y ago
The real point is that scientists (not just biologists) will be able to get more done period. We've been bringing computers and automation into science for a while now and it has made a big difference. Sometimes you need to collect A LOT of data to be able to form a theory. Sometimes you just need to try all the possibilities. A lot of science depends on that being done, and with automation now it can be done. When I say done, I don't mean it's just faster and cheaper, I mean it is FEASABLE when it wouldn't be with human labour. This a great scientific tool, think microscope, it's in that ballpark.
Herring 17y ago
The highest level of abstraction is lying on a beach while robots do all the work.
- ovi256 17y ago
  Unfortunately, I think the current socio-economic system can not allow that, even if it is the logical conclusion. Of course people would still do challenging tasks (or "work"), but not for material rewards.

johnohara 17y ago

Kudos to the team that properly defined the problem and employed the use of an expert system to solve it. Not yet sentient as the title delicately alludes however. Were a Nobel Prize awarded it would still go to the team not the device. Where are we on the Kurzweil timeline btw.

ippisl 17y ago
Where the nobel prize goes is an interesting question. let's say that some robot discovers an important discovery , that deserves the nobel. let's also say the methods of operation of the robot are standard practice at the time of building it. and the discovery came through luck and tons of robotic work. who should win the nobel? would the robot be considered by the nobel comity ?
- johnohara 17y ago
  That was the question posed by Hawking back in 2003(?). His assertion was that the device would have to be considered intelligent, albeit another form of intelligence, and possibly deserving of rights. It does seem as though we're getting there.
  - marciovm123 17y ago
    The classic philosopher's version of this is the Chinese Room: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room My naive understanding is that the intelligence is not in the room or the book, but in the person who wrote the book.
    - rgejman 17y ago
      What? No. This has nothing to do with the Chinese Room argument. The Chinese Room argument is about refuting the claim that reasoning according to rules can ever be considered intelligence (i.e. refuting Strong AI).
      - 17y ago

khelloworld 17y ago

While the robot is definitely impressive, without substantial AI in it, I dont think it qualifies to be called a 'scientist' just yet. It clearly cannot appreciate what its doing -- it might just as well have been cleaning the dishes.

PhilipReiser 17y ago
As a former member of this research group, I can tell you are spouting nonsense and I think you had better run along and read the paper before making derogatory comments. It's just that people and media are far more interested in seeing robots than in seeing software. FYI: I have spent the last 10 years working on algorithmic scientific method.

Estragon 17y ago

I haven't read the paper, yet, but it seems as though the article really inflates the claims for the robot's cognitive achievement. There were a set of candidate genes to test as the cause of each enzyme. This was a matter of creating a set of deletion mutants and checking whether the mutants produced the enzymes, a laborious task which would be pretty easy to automate without artificial intelligence. It does seem to be a helpful automation, though.

hartror 17y ago
Yeah from what the article describes it sounds like at is simplest form a nested for loop varing across a number of variables. I assume it is quite a bit more complex than that but artificial intelligence?
- jules 17y ago
  The perception of what is artificial intelligence is changing all the time. Playing chess is just looping (and not even quite a bit more complex), but it used to be artificial intelligence.
- PhilipReiser 17y ago
  You're wrong. Don't assume, read the article and the papers it cites.

tomkinstinch 17y ago

Very impressive, but as others have said: without AI at the helm, this is mostly a complex robot taking the place of a human technician. ( Which costs more? ) I suspect that much of the macro-scale manipulation performed by this robot (and humans) will be made obsolete in coming years by microfluidic analytic instruments.

bch 17y ago

Am I the only one who was more excited to see the link to Tron Legacy?

teeja 17y ago

I think the key point is this: "Dr. King and colleagues gave Adam a database containing information on the enzymes, the chemicals and reagents to do the experiments, and access to the yeast cultures." I imagine it would have taken a really, really smart robot about 300 years to figure that stuff out on its own. And only IF it had a reason to figure it out. Not AI ... just another Expert System. Doing exactly what it's told to, efficiently.

PhilipReiser 17y ago
Wrong. An expert system only draws conclusions from a knowledge base using deductive inference. This system also uses abductive inference and inductive inference. Read the paper.

dean 17y ago

"And though some may be hesitant to accept the ever-increasing roles of robots in our world, I, for one, " welcome our new robot overlords. (Sorry, but I couldn't resist that perfect segue.)

PhilipReiser 17y ago

BTW The paper was published a year ago, so this is hardly news. And the previous significant article was in Nature in 2004.