Robotic Scientists: Our Future Job Competition?

As if finding a job isn’t already bad enough, scientists had to go and put themselves out of jobs by creating a robotic scientist. The robot, called Adam, has successfully developed and tested a scientific hypothesis all by itself–”Look Ma! No humans!”

The LiveScience article says that this breakthrough could “spare” lab assistants and post-docs some of the “drudgery” of research. Yes, I’ll admit, lab work can sometimes be tedious and boring. But at the same time, it’s part of the joy of science. If we let robots do the work for us, then we are taking out part of the fun, and putting ourselves out of jobs!

“We’ve now demonstrated that Adam can do some novel biology work,” said Ross King in the article, a computer scientist and biologist at Aberystwyth University in the UK.

Adam’s first achievement involved discovering that certain genes in baker’s yeast code for specific enzymes which encourage biochemical reactions in yeast. The robot scientist then ran an experiment with its lab hardware to test its predictions, analyzed the results, and repeated the experiment.

Previously, computers and robots were able to generate repetitive tasks, such as gene sequencing. Five years ago, researchers at the University of Cambridge created a computer that could generate hypotheses and perform experiments.

Adam is one of the first robots to get artificial intelligence to try and control laboratory automation. It may have cost $1 million so far, but Adam can investigate a thousand experiments a day, and still keep track of all the results better than humans can.

Of course, where would Adam be without Eve? Eve is another robotic scientist, dedicated to screening chemical compounds for new pharmaceutical drugs that could combat diseases such as malaria.

Full details on Adam appear in the todays’s issue of the journal Science. Be on the lookout!

Tagged as: Adam, Eve, job competition, robotic scientist, unemployment