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A Robot Scientist Will Dream Up New Materials To Advance Computing (technologyreview.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MIT Technology Review: In a laboratory that overlooks a busy shopping street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a robot is attempting to create new materials. A robot arm dips a pipette into a dish and transfers a tiny amount of bright liquid into one of many receptacles sitting in front of another machine. When all the samples are ready, the second machine tests their optical properties, and the results are fed to a computer that controls the arm. Software analyzes the results of these experiments, formulates a few hypotheses, and then starts the process over again. Humans are barely required.
The setup, developed by a startup called Kebotix, hints at how machine learning and robotic automation may be poised to revolutionize materials science in coming years. The company believes it may find new compounds that could, among other things, absorb pollution, combat drug-resistant fungal infections, and serve as more efficient optoelectronic components. The company's software learns from 3-D models of molecules with known properties. Kebotix uses several machine-learning methods to design novel chemical compounds. The company feeds molecular models of compounds with desirable properties into a type of neural network that learns a statistical representation of those properties. This algorithm can then come up with new examples that fit the same model. To strain out potentially useless materials, Kebotix uses another neural network and "then the company's robotic system tests the remaining chemical structures," reports MIT Technology Review. "The results of those experiments can be fed back into the machine-learning pipeline, helping it get closer to the desired chemical properties. The company dubs the overall system a 'self-driving lab.'"
The setup, developed by a startup called Kebotix, hints at how machine learning and robotic automation may be poised to revolutionize materials science in coming years. The company believes it may find new compounds that could, among other things, absorb pollution, combat drug-resistant fungal infections, and serve as more efficient optoelectronic components. The company's software learns from 3-D models of molecules with known properties. Kebotix uses several machine-learning methods to design novel chemical compounds. The company feeds molecular models of compounds with desirable properties into a type of neural network that learns a statistical representation of those properties. This algorithm can then come up with new examples that fit the same model. To strain out potentially useless materials, Kebotix uses another neural network and "then the company's robotic system tests the remaining chemical structures," reports MIT Technology Review. "The results of those experiments can be fed back into the machine-learning pipeline, helping it get closer to the desired chemical properties. The company dubs the overall system a 'self-driving lab.'"
All I can come up with is showing up to an exam late in my underwear.
Sig. Sig. Sputnik
The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare. In fact, the monkey would almost surely type every possible finite text an infinite number of times.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
They are basically taking the same spot that TA Edison used so successfully The same idea was also used by the University of Manchester with automated lab assistants dubbed Adam and Eve https://www.chemistryworld.com...
Filters "useless" compounds. Um, ok. But what if the startling breakthrough takes place in one of those assumed useless compounds? No insight possible. No flash of brilliance. No serendipity. No human advantage possible. Remember junk DNA? It was until it wasn't.
E Proelio Veritas.
Feel free to start your own robot lab and give away the results for free.
Robots don't dream -- there are no brainwaves. Either it is trying materials at random or enumerating the permutations.
Who the fuck writes this garbage?
function DreamUp()
{
return Math.floor(Math.random() * NUM_MATERIALS);
}
The company believes it may find new compounds that could, among other things, "absorb pollution" (murder humans), "combat drug-resistant fungal infections" (murder humans), and "serve as more efficient optoelectronic components" (murder humans).
I applaud whoever took the founders mugshots, makes them all look like they themselves were forced to give this machine a body and just say they did it intentionally.