[Image from Adobe Stock] Why you should read this report: Lab automation looks hot, but the usual indicators are quiet: patents are flat, vendors report uneven demand, and standard market metrics barely move. This report shows what those signals miss—where recent AI-drug-discovery capital actually landed, why “Lab Automation Engineer” roles increasingly require Python and APIs…
R&D World webinar tackles the ROI math for lab automation
Lab budgets are shrinking as grant funding tightens, forcing researchers to justify automation purchases with hard ROI. To help with the calculus, R&D World is hosting a BRANDTECH Scientific–sponsored webinar on September 30 at 2:00 PM ET that will offer a reproducible framework for evaluating automation to maximize the return on investment. Tom Friedlander, business…
OpenAI launches “Deep Research,” an agent to automate complex online research tasks
OpenAI has launched a new offering known as “Deep Research,” which can plan and execute multi-step online research tasks. Potential uses of the product, as OpenAI outlined in an announcement include navigating scientific literature or analyzing UI/UX research data. In an internal evaluation, the agent shows strength in automating routine online research tasks, achieving nearly…
AI agents: The next big thing in science — eventually?
If you read much about AI, you’ve likely noticed the growing number of models capable of “reasoning” and acting autonomously. This isn’t just about chatbots; it’s transforming scientific discovery. Google DeepMind recently launched a 15-day weather forecasting agent, bringing new levels of accuracy to complex atmospheric modeling. OpenAI’s latest reasoning model, o1, has demonstrated potential…
This week in AI research: TSMC’s restrictions on AI chip sales to China escalate tech tensions
The US-China tech war is escalating on the silicon front. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), the world’s top chipmaker, will halt production of specific AI chips for Chinese customers, complying with intensifying U.S. efforts to restrict China’s access to silicon to drive its own AI research. This move, effective Monday, throws another wrench into the…
Wiley backs Potato’s vision to win over skeptical scientists with trustable AI research assistant
A 2016 survey by Nature found that over 70% of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist’s experiments, and more than half have failed to reproduce their own. One significant challenge contributing to this crisis is the difficulty scientists face in understanding experimental parameters across studies. “The basic problem was massive amounts of…
Why o1-preview and o1-mini are like a STEM Rottweiler
In the past month, I’ve spent considerable time with OpenAI’s o1 models, and I’ve come to think of them as the Rottweilers of the genAI world: powerful, occasionally stubborn, and requiring special handling. When they work well, they can be capable underlings—but they require a firm hand and careful attention to detail. And they can…