The Welsh will doom US ALL!

[The_Carpenter]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7979113.stm

All this has happened before... and it will happen again...

[Admiral Mappalazarou]

Saw that one coming.

[The_Carpenter]

this is gonna happen with every robotics/ AI story for the next year....

maybe longer if Caprica is up to anything... (I won't be watching though)

[Dr Weir]

Here's the article from New Scientist:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/...uman-help.html

At least I have 20 years left to pursue my career....

[LaCroix]

It's an R.U.R. beginning. (Rossum Universal Robots)

[jenks]

"It has already identified the role of several genes in yeast cells, and is able to plan further experiments to test its own hypotheses."

That's impressive.

[AvatarIII]

there are already not enough jobs for the scientifically inclined and now they want to fill some of those jobs with ROBOTS!!! garh!!

[Womble]

One day they'll move on to human trials.

[Madwelshboy]

there are already not enough jobs for the scientifically inclined and now they want to fill some of those jobs with ROBOTS!!! garh!!

Tell me about it!!

[Flyboy]

So Aberystwyth University is the home of the world's premier department of International Politics AND to ground breaking robotics and AI programmes.

Wow.

[The_Carpenter]

there are already not enough jobs for the scientifically inclined and now they want to fill some of those jobs with ROBOTS!!! garh!!

I know... I am hoping that this will fail epically..... I am already obscenely underpaid as a university graduate as at is... with out this.... upstart machine coming in!

tis always the way.... bull****ers with no real talent (like bankers... yeah) get all the money, whilst those with brains who work for the betterment of mankind get paid peanuts... it disgusts me

[Dr Weir]

I was worried when I first read this, but there's a machine that does my job in my laboratory, yet they still hire a load of scientists to conduct the same kind of experiments (immunoflorescence). Also they still need humans to test the experiments to make sure this robot isn't malfunctioning and such a machine would be costly to buy and maintain which would include hiring engineers specialised in that field. It's hard enough trying to hire graduate level engineers in the first place, unless these are going to be replaced too.

There are probably plenty of other issues too, such as people naturally finding a human more trustworthy and needing one to communicate results. Plus you still need someone to programme the machine in the first place.

I find it hard to believe the robot could replace a graduate student as implied in the New Scientist article, it's probably simply following the kind of logic online genome databases do such as BLAST coupled with the experimental data. It would be limited to these boundaries and lack being spontaneous and imaginative, which are important components of creativity.