New analysis raises doubts over autonomous lab’s materials ‘discoveries’

By Julia Robinson2024-01-16T14:30:00

A robotic arm at work in a modern laboratory

Source: © The Regents of the University of California, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory/CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Experimental and computational issues flagged as researchers conclude that a fully automated lab failed to make new materials

A critique of a paper published in Nature last year, which reported the discovery of over 40 novel materials using an autonomous laboratory guided by artificial intelligence, has concluded that no new materials were discovered.

The laboratory, dubbed A-Lab, was developed by a team led by Yan Zeng and Gerbrand Ceder at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, US, in collaboration with researchers from Google DeepMind, and used machine learning tools to plan and interpret the outcomes of experiments performed by robots.