Who needs scientists anyway? A global consortium of six automated laboratories, overseen by artificial intelligence (AI), set out to produce new laser materials, dividing the labor from synthesis to testing. The effort yielded a compound that emits laser light with record-setting efficiency, researchers report today in Science. Along with other recent results, the feat suggests that, in some areas, self-driving labs can surpass the best scientists, making discoveries missed by humans.

“Automated labs are going beyond proof-of-concept demonstrations,” says Milad Abolhasani, a chemical engineer at North Carolina State University who developed a self-driving lab unaffiliated with the new work. “They have started to push the edge of science to the next level.”

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