Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by n1 on Tuesday June 09 2015, @09:06PM   Printer-friendly
from the obsolete-resources dept.

For the first time ever a computer has managed to develop a new scientific theory using only its artificial intelligence, and with no help from human beings.

Computer scientists and biologists from Tufts University programmed the computer so that it was able to develop a theory independently when it was faced with a scientific problem. The problem they chose was one that has been puzzling biologists for 120 years. The genes of sliced-up flatworms are capable of regenerating in order to form new organisms -- this is a long-documented phenomenon, but scientists have been mystified for years over exactly what happens to the cells to make this possible.

By presenting the computer with this problem, however, it was able to reverse engineer a solution that could explain the mechanism of the process, known as planaria. The details discovered by the computer have been published in the journal PLOS Computational Biology, along with the artificial intelligence method used to develop the theory.

The significant thing that the two researchers Daniel Lobo and Michael Levin were hoping to discover was not how new tissue is generated, but how it knows what shape and proportions to grow in. That sacred information is locked away in our genes.

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2015-06/05/computer-develops-scientific-theory-independently


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 1) by dingus on Wednesday June 10 2015, @06:39PM

    by dingus (5224) on Wednesday June 10 2015, @06:39PM (#194619)

    aye, but the important bit is that the AI wasn't doing any research, It was just running a simulation and optimizing it. So, a better description would be that the AI was a tool used by the researchers to do their research.