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.
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