British Boffins Create Quasi-Sentient Robot Scientist

A team of scientists at the Aberystwyth and Cambridge universities have created a machine gifted with artificial intelligence which has been able to create knowledge by its own, without human help or intervention.

Adam managed to complete the traditional process through which scientific knowledge has evolved. The machine laid out a theory about yeast enzymes, predicted a series of outcomes based on the theory, build a series of experiments to test the theory and ran them using lab robotics, doing the steps autonomously.

After getting the results, Adam interpreted it and, online ezine Robots.net added, provided with far more details than any human scientists would have achieved. Human scientists were able to verify independently Adam's conclusions which proved to be right.

Boffins Create Quasi-Sentient Robot Scientist ITPortal.com

Why is it always the boffins? There are no university courses for boffins, you don't see jobs advertised for boffins, I've never met a boffin at a party. No wonder these social outcasts are compelled to overachieve by coming up with all the crazy ideas. I digress...

Despite the tabloid headline, and the confusion of "sentient" with "intelligent", I think this story may be almost as significant as it sounds. All hype aside, a computer controlled robot scientist capable of creating and conducting experiments and analysing their results, with a high degree of autonomy, is surely the first great milestone of the technological singularity.

Adam: The First Robot Scientist Robots.net - 4 Apr 2009

Robot Scientist project website: Robot Scientist

Nice find.

So does that mean they are using a massive computer as the brain of the robot? guess they couldn't fit it inside the head :-p

There seems to be more information about the software and robot hardware than the computing harware - so I think this is more about sophisticated programming than super computing (although it submits findings via a Grid interface to other research institutions).

More info here: Optimising the flow of experiments to a Robot Scientist with Multi-Objective Evolutionary Algorithms (pdf)

originally posted by: EvilAxis

A team of scientists at the Aberystwyth and Cambridge universities have created a machine gifted with artificial intelligence which has been able to create knowledge by its own, without human help or intervention.

Adam managed to complete the traditional process through which scientific knowledge has evolved. The machine laid out a theory about yeast enzymes, predicted a series of outcomes based on the theory, build a series of experiments to test the theory and ran them using lab robotics, doing the steps autonomously.

After getting the results, Adam interpreted it and, online ezine Robots.net added, provided with far more details than any human scientists would have achieved. Human scientists were able to verify independently Adam's conclusions which proved to be right.

Boffins Create Quasi-Sentient Robot Scientist ITPortal.com

Why is it always the boffins? There are no university courses for boffins, you don't see jobs advertised for boffins, I've never met a boffin at a party. No wonder these social outcasts are compelled to overachieve by coming up with all the crazy ideas. I digress...

Despite the tabloid headline, and the confusion of "sentient" with "intelligent", I think this story may be almost as significant as it sounds. All hype aside, a computer controlled robot scientist capable of creating and conducting experiments and analysing their results, with a high degree of autonomy, is surely the first great milestone of the technological singularity.

Adam: The First Robot Scientist Robots.net - 4 Apr 2009

Robot Scientist project website: Robot Scientist

All its going to take is one super intelligent AI robot with access to an escape and you'll see the largest, fastest, most aggressive conquest of earth no human could ever hope to match.

a reply to: EvilAxis

Why is it always the boffins?

Thank you.

That word is a red flag, because only MSM journalists use it.

Never have heard it in any conversation about research or science.

Cheers