Self-Driving Labs: The 5th Scientific Paradigm? - Jason Hattrick-Simpers (UToronto)

Automated experiments that are controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), so-called self-driving labs (SDL), are not the future of science they are its present. The first demonstration SDLs are now more than 5 years old, and the scientific community is now deploying the technology to address the world’s most pressing issues such as climate change and the design of new therapeutic medicines. But what is a SDL and how could we ever possibly have enough materials data for an AI to be useful? In this talk, I will discuss (1) how we arrived at this inevitability, (2) how it enables us to science faster than we have ever scienced before, and (3) why I am not worried about any of you losing your future jobs to SDLs.