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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> But it didn't conjure these designs out of thin air.
And human scientist obviously do?
Of course you had to give the robot required knowledge on the plate because it couldn't pull what it needed to know from library. After all, books are written in some incomprehensible human language.
The moment that robots will begin to understand human language people no longer will be able to call them just tools.
I think "design" is being used in a loose sense here. It's not designing an experiment the way that Rutherford designed experiments to probe the nature of an atom. What it's doing is more like selecting an independent variable gene X and a dependent variable enzyme Y, and selecting concentrations of X and reagent Z to mix together to maximize the expectation value of the statistical significance of the level of Y that is measured afterwards. That's using a combination of search algorithms and Bayesian learning to optimize the parameters within a well-defined framework. Then those parameters are hooked up to physical beakers to get more data for the next generation of data.
Don't get me wrong, this is an impressive technical achievement, and I think it will do a hell of a lot to speed up the advancement of science in the field of microbiology. My hat is off to these researchers because this little guy they build is totally awesome. I'm just quibbling about what the word "design" does and does not mean in this context. I agree that biologists will still have a role in research labs, and I'm glad that they (or at least a well-funded subset of them) will be freed from the more monotonous details of their trade so that they can work on the more creative, abstract, and "science-y" parts of it[1].
[1] I do not know enough about biology to know what exactly those parts are. I assume they exist, even though I do tend to have the "stamp-collecting" bias against biology[2].
[2] Quote from Ernest Rutherford, mentioned above: "All science is either physics or stamp collecting." I.e., biology is heavy on cataloguing and light on abstractions.
I think the way to determine if the word "design" should be used here , is to see if before this robot , the word design was used in this context. otherwise will be doing the same "it's not AI" fallacy all over again.
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.
On the other hand this will make biologists more productive relative to other scientists. So maybe there will be more funds for biologists compared to other scientists.
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.
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.