“British scientists say they may have invented themselves out of a job” was the opening to a story on CNN.com (15 January 2004), reporting on a paper published in Nature. Other media outlets took up a similar refrain in response to the news that Stephen Oliver and colleagues have developed a 'robot scientist', which “plans its experiments, reaches for the pipette, dispenses and mixes liquids and observes the results” (The Guardian, 15 January 2004).

The team had set their robot the task of determining the genes involved in a well-known metabolic pathway in budding yeast, by observing the growth of knockout strains on different media. The authors compared the results with those obtained by graduate students, and found that, “Not only were the results just as accurate, but the system did not need to perform as many experiments because its hypothesis generator found solutions more quickly, so its costs were about two-thirds lower” ( NewScientist.com , 14 January 2004).

There was plenty of philosophical musing. “Some scientists questioned whether the system ... deserved the title of scientist”, said The Boston Globe (15 January 2004). They also quoted Stuart Schreiber: “For human scientists, some of the most interesting discoveries happen when researchers notice something they weren't looking for and suddenly change course”.

The authors suggest, however, that the robot could improve things for graduate students. “It's a simple area of science. In that restricted world the computers compete well with scientists”, co-author Ross King told BBC News Online (14 January 2004). “I think this frees students up to do more interesting work”, King added (The Globe and Mail, 17 January 2004).