alt Hacker NewsGreat news, then! TFA: "Last week, we previewed the Model Hardware Standard, which allows Claude to directly and safely operate laboratory equipment."
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IshKebab • yesterday at 9:34 PM
How much lab equipment is automatable though? There's definitely some in biology, but if you're doing fundamental research it's 99% stuff you are building yourself with your own hands. Robotics is a long way from being able to do any of that.
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fock • yesterday at 8:10 PM
that might indeed be a problem for all the pulp-producing labrats of STEM in southern europe and the third world.
However I think this area has so much decoupled from industry and solid research institutions that they might not notice at all (beyond their use of AI-generated slop to augment the slop they already produce)...
The bottleneck in science isn't ideas or human work speed. The bottleneck is resources and time to get experimental results.
LLMs, even in control of lab equipment, address neither of those.