[Infowarrior] - Robot achieves scientific first

[Richard Forno]

Robot achieves scientific first

By Clive Cookson, Science Editor

Published: April 2 2009 19:17 | Last updated: April 2 2009 19:17


http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f2b97d9a-1f96-11de-a7a5-00144feabdc0.html

A laboratory robot called Adam has been hailed as the first machine in  
history to have discovered new scientific knowledge independently of  
its human creators.

Adam formed a hypothesis on the genetics of bakers’ yeast and carried  
out experiments to test its predictions, without intervention from its  
makers at Aberystwyth University.

The result was a series of “simple but useful” discoveries, confirmed  
by human scientists, about the gene coding for yeast enzymes. The  
research is published in the journal Science.

Professor Ross King, the chief creator of Adam, said robots would not  
supplant human researchers but make their work more productive and  
interesting.

“Ultimately we hope to have teams of human and robot scientists  
working together in laboratories,” he said.

Adam is the result of a five-year collaboration between computer  
scientists and biologists at Aberystwyth and Cambridge universities.

The researchers endowed Adam with a huge database of yeast biology,  
automated hardware to carry out experiments, supplies of yeast cells  
and lab chemicals, and powerful artificial intelligence software.

Although they did not intervene directly in Adam’s experiments, they  
did stand by to fix technical glitches, add chemicals and remove waste.

The team has just completed a successor robot called Eve, which is  
about to work with Adam on a series of experiments designed to find  
new drugs to treat tropical diseases such as malaria and  
schistosomiasis.

“Adam is a prototype,” says Prof King. “Eve is better designed and  
more elegant.”

In the new experiments, Adam and Eve will work together to devise and  
carry out tests on thousands of chemical compounds to discover  
antimalarial drugs.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009