

Robot Scientist Adam makes discovery that has eluded human scientists for years. - bkudria
http://singularityhub.com/2010/03/16/adam-the-robot-scientist-makes-its-first-discovery/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+SingularityHub+(Singularity+Hub)&utm_content=Google+Reader

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scott_s
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.

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ippisl
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.

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scott_s
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.

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scotty79
It designed what experiments to commence to solve the problem. No biology
undergrad was able to do it so far for "orphan" yeast enzymes.

I think this is significant and that such automated experiment design and
execution might replace some researchers.

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scott_s
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.

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>

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scotty79
> 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.

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Estragon
I haven't read the paper, yet, but it seems as though the article really
inflates the claims for the robot's cognitive achievement. There were a set of
candidate genes to test as the cause of each enzyme. This was a matter of
creating a set of deletion mutants and checking whether the mutants produced
the enzymes, a laborious task which would be pretty easy to automate without
artificial intelligence. It does seem to be a helpful automation, though.

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hartror
Yeah from what the article describes it sounds like at is simplest form a
nested for loop varing across a number of variables. I assume it is quite a
bit more complex than that but artificial intelligence?

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jules
The perception of what is artificial intelligence is changing all the time.
Playing chess is just looping (and not even quite a bit more complex), but it
used to be artificial intelligence.

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teeja
I think the key point is this: "Dr. King and colleagues gave Adam a database
containing information on the enzymes, the chemicals and reagents to do the
experiments, and access to the yeast cultures."

I imagine it would have taken a really, really smart robot about 300 years to
figure that stuff out on its own. And only IF it had a reason to figure it
out.

Not AI ... just another Expert System. Doing _exactly_ what it's told to,
efficiently.

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PhilipReiser
Wrong. An expert system only draws conclusions from a knowledge base using
deductive inference. This system also uses abductive inference and inductive
inference. Read the paper.

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johnohara
Kudos to the team that properly defined the problem and employed the use of an
expert system to solve it.

Not yet sentient as the title delicately alludes however. Were a Nobel Prize
awarded it would still go to the team not the device.

Where are we on the Kurzweil timeline btw.

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ippisl
Where the nobel prize goes is an interesting question. let's say that some
robot discovers an important discovery , that deserves the nobel. let's also
say the methods of operation of the robot are standard practice at the time of
building it. and the discovery came through luck and tons of robotic work. who
should win the nobel? would the robot be considered by the nobel comity ?

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johnohara
That was the question posed by Hawking back in 2003(?). His assertion was that
the device would have to be considered intelligent, albeit another form of
intelligence, and possibly deserving of rights.

It does seem as though we're getting there.

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marciovm123
The classic philosopher's version of this is the Chinese Room:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room>

My naive understanding is that the intelligence is not in the room or the
book, but in the person who wrote the book.

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rgejman
What? No. This has nothing to do with the Chinese Room argument. The Chinese
Room argument is about refuting the claim that reasoning according to rules
can _ever_ be considered intelligence (i.e. refuting Strong AI).

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marciovm123
My naive interpretation is that both of these situations involve assigning
"intelligence" to a machine or system built by a human w/o said human's
continued intervention.

I'm thinking about the systems, not the rules within the systems. If the
"official" philosophy line is that it's all about those rules, well maybe
that's why official philosophy is so damn confusing.

I just finished reading "On Intelligence" by Jeff Hawkins, let me recommend
that as a really well written and lucid explanation of the meaning of
intelligence. If Numenta can build systems that can replicate what a 2 year
old can do given a 2 year old's memory and sensory capabilities, I'll be ready
to say that Jeff's explanation wins, and that philosophers better find
something else that's impossible to prove or disprove (like the existence of
God) to go argue about.

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pmichaud
Neat. Once you have a very clear problem statement, you can write a program
that can perform experiments and analyze the results. It's a step.

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tomkinstinch
Very impressive, but as others have said: without AI at the helm, this is
mostly a complex robot taking the place of a human technician. ( Which costs
more? )

I suspect that much of the macro-scale manipulation performed by this robot
(and humans) will be made obsolete in coming years by microfluidic analytic
instruments.

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khelloworld
While the robot is definitely impressive, without substantial AI in it, I dont
think it qualifies to be called a 'scientist' just yet. It clearly cannot
appreciate what its doing -- it might just as well have been cleaning the
dishes.

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PhilipReiser
As a former member of this research group, I can tell you are spouting
nonsense and I think you had better run along and read the paper before making
derogatory comments. It's just that people and media are far more interested
in seeing robots than in seeing software.

FYI: I have spent the last 10 years working on algorithmic scientific method.

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dean
"And though some may be hesitant to accept the ever-increasing roles of robots
in our world, I, for one, " welcome our new robot overlords.

(Sorry, but I couldn't resist that perfect segue.)

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PhilipReiser
BTW The paper was published a year ago, so this is hardly news. And the
previous significant article was in Nature in 2004.

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bch
Am I the only one who was more excited to see the link to Tron Legacy?

