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Honda lends a helping hand to the next generation of roboticists
Honda did not just lend Arizona State University students a lab bench this September. It lent them a hand.A very advanced one.
PhoneBot gives old smartphones a new job on two legs
Smartphones combine cameras, motion sensors and powerful processors in devices that fit inside a pocket. These features could also make them useful components for robots, reducing the need to buy and ...
Renowned Mote Marine Science and Education Center Opens New Aquarium in Sarasota Using Penetron Technology
Situated on a 12-acre site within Nathan Benderson Park in Sarasota, the Mote SEA campus features state-of-the-art STEM teaching labs for biomedical science, microbiology and immunology; marine and coastal ecology; and ocean engineering, AI technology, robotics, and sensor development. These labs provide hands-on learning opportunities for more than 70,000 K–12 students each year from Sarasota and Manatee County schools, as well as schools in nearby counties.
Free ‘STEAM the Block Party' aims to get DC youth involved in science, tech, arts
Drones, robotics, AI and more: The Steam the Block Party in Southeast D.C. on Friday, Oct. 9, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. aims to spark a love of science. Members of the Swaliga Foundation talk with News4’s Molette Green. Performers include UCB.
FireFly Robotics files for Nasdaq direct listing
FireFly Robotics, which makes electric turfgrass harvesters and autonomous golf-course mowers, on Wednesday filed to go public through a direct listing.
Robotics Company Advanced Navigation Expands Navigation Technology Manufacturing To Huntsville
It also applies to navigation.
More than 1,000 students explore STEM careers through hands-on experiments at Science Museum
More than 1,000 seventh graders are testing robotics, electricity and virtual reality at Science Museum Oklahoma's Innovation Week.
UCSF Health Reaches 25,000 Robotic Surgeries
Surgeons at the UC San Francisco have performed over 25,000 robotically assisted minimally invasive surgeries, making it the first University of California health center to reach this milestone. UCSF Health has the busiest robotic surgery program in the UC Health system and is one of the leading academic medical institutions for robotic surgeries in the Western U.S.
Georgia Tech And Amazon Launch Science Hub For AI, Robotics, And Logistics Research
Georgia Tech and Amazon have launched the Georgia Tech-Amazon Science Hub, expanding a decade-long research relationship between the university and technology company. Amazon will provide funding for joint research projects and community-building initiatives through the new hub.
Trinity Health Ann Arbor paves the way with new aortic valve procedure
Cardiac surgeons at Trinity Health Hospital in Ann Arbor are using robotic assistance to pave the way for a new aortic valve surgery procedure. WEMU’s Ana Longoria has the details.
America wants to wean itself off Chinese technology. Will the pain pay off?
Seven years after founding a robotics startup in San Francisco, Rajat Bhageria is confronting a daunting new task: building robots without any help from China.
How Biotech AI And Robotics Bridge Bottlenecks To Impact Global Health
While biotech increasingly adopts AI for R&D, manufacturing bottlenecks constrain health innovation. AI and robotics have the potential to unlock health impact globally.
Bishop’s computer science chair says AI is eliminating ‘grunt work’ and reshaping digital jobs
Dr. Russell Butler, chair of Bishop’s University’s Department of Computer Science, says artificial intelligence is increasingly taking over routine digital “grunt work,” changing the skills students and workers may need in the years ahead. Photo courtesy of Bishop’s University. Click here to read our platform! Get local news like this every morning. Subscribe free below. Subscribe Pulse Newsroom Artificial intelligence is already taking over some of the routine digital work once performed by entry-level employees, according to Bishop’s University Computer Science chair Dr. Russell Butler — a shift he believes will make expertise, judgement and the ability to evaluate AI-generated work increasingly important. Butler described the change as automation reaching what he calls the “bottom of the cognitive pyramid” during an interview with The Pulse about AI, university education and the future of digital work. His argument is not that humans are disappearing from the workplace. Instead, he sees their role changing as AI becomes capable of handling more of the repetitive tasks involved in computer-based work. “Everything’s converging on just AI basically doing all the grunt work,” Butler said. The bottom of the cognitive pyramid Butler is from Lennoxville, completed his undergraduate studies at Bishop’s and later earned his PhD at the Université de Sherbrooke. He joined Bishop’s in 2019 and now chairs its Department of Computer Science. He uses AI in research, teaching and other creative work, and said the technology is increasingly capable of handling routine digital tasks that once required substantial human time. “You’ve got the grunt work, like moving things around in Excel, doing basic programming tasks,” Butler said. “That’s like the bottom grunt work that the entry-level worker would have done two or three years ago.” Butler went further, saying in his view that much of this type of work has already been absorbed by AI tools. He connected that change to a shift he sees taking place in computer science, where entry-level roles have declined while experienced workers can use AI to increase what they can produce. “A senior developer now has access to essentially an unlimited amount of junior developers on demand,” Butler said. He was describing AI systems metaphorically, not literal employees. His point was that one experienced developer can now ask AI tools to produce code or other technical work that might previously have been assigned to more junior workers. That raises a broader question for universities and employers. If some of the simpler work traditionally given to newcomers can now be done by machines, how do people gain the experience needed to become senior workers themselves? Students doing work that once required years of programming Butler said he is already seeing the change inside his classroom. He created a Bishop’s course called CS208, Coding in Plain English, to show students — including those without traditional programming backgrounds — what they can accomplish using AI. Some come from disciplines such as psychology or neuroscience with no previous programming experience. “What I’m finding is that students who have zero programming experience, they come in from another discipline like psychology or neuroscience or something, they are now able to get up and running with real data sets,” Butler said. Butler’s own doctoral work involved neuroimaging, and he said he has assigned students work he considers comparable to the kinds of analysis he performed during his PhD. He described giving students a real dataset, an expected result and instructions to use AI to complete the analysis. Butler said those students have been able to carry out work at a level he associates with tasks he once performed after years of programming experience. That does not mean a student using AI instantly acquires the same knowledge as an experienced computer scientist. But Butler sees it as evidence that AI can dramatically lower the technical barrier between having a problem to solve and producing a working result. The role of the person using the system then changes. They need to know what to ask for, understand enough about the subject to judge the answer and take responsibility for what is ultimately produced. What about AI hallucinations? One persistent concern surrounding generative AI is hallucination — when a system produces information that sounds convincing but is false or unsupported. Butler said that problem has improved substantially in newer systems and is not as severe as it was with earlier models. He pointed in particular to newer AI systems’ ability to search the web, consult scientific databases and return source links rather than simply generating a citation from their internal model. Butler nevertheless said users should verify what AI produces. “You should verify,” he said while discussing citations generated with AI. His position is that hallucinations have become less common in the systems he uses, not that incorrect AI output is impossible. Human checking remains part of the process. Hours of work compressed Butler offered another example from his administrative work at Bishop’s. The university has been comparing CEGEP courses with first-year Bishop’s courses to determine where students may qualify for advanced standing. Traditionally, Butler said, that means reviewing two sets of course descriptions and manually matching one institution’s courses with another’s. As department chair, that could require hours of reading and comparison. He said AI can now be given both sets of material and asked to generate an initial mapping automatically. “It saves me hours and hours of work,” Butler said. Butler said the AI-generated mapping can also produce a better result than he would produce himself. He sees similar opportunities in businesses. A company may receive specifications, drawings, emails or other digital material from customers and then have employees convert that information into an internal format before anything can be manufactured or delivered. AI can increasingly perform parts of that intermediate processing. In Butler’s view, the employee does not necessarily disappear. Instead, the job becomes more about checking the result. “The human is still there,” he said. Judgement could become more valuable That change is central to Butler’s view of where digital work may be headed. If AI can produce a first draft, write basic code, compare documents or process large amounts of information, he argues that knowledge and judgement become increasingly important. “The real scarce resource going forward is going to be domain knowledge, expertise, and… credentials, authority, the ability to work with other people,” Butler said. He is therefore encouraging students not only to learn AI tools but also to broaden their education. He mentioned acting, fine art and photography as examples of courses that can help develop what he described as taste and intuition — the ability to recognize what is good, what is not and what should be changed. “And that’s the skill that they need now because the grunt work has been automated and now it’s about evaluating what the AI produces and telling it how to improve or expand the output,” Butler said. That does not remove the need for technical knowledge. Butler’s argument is that the emphasis may shift away from manually completing every step of a task and toward directing, checking and improving work produced with AI assistance. He also stressed that humans remain responsible for final decisions. “At the end of the day, the human has to make the final call,” Butler said, pointing to the question of accountability. Physical work may be different Butler draws a distinction between digital work and jobs requiring people to manipulate the physical world. He expects AI to continue advancing quickly in tasks performed almost entirely on computers. He is more cautious about claims that humanoid robots will soon be able to replace workers such as plumbers or electricians. Butler said those trades would not be replaced “anytime soon” in his view and described some current robotics demonstrations as overhyped. He described the situation as counterintuitive. “It’s almost like we solved the highest level first,” he said, contrasting advances in digital AI with the harder problem of building robots capable of operating reliably in the physical world. Butler’s argument is that some digital occupations could face automation sooner than trades requiring complex physical work. The wider AI shift in the Townships Butler’s comments come as local institutions are increasingly grappling with how AI should be used. The federal government recently announced up to $162 million over five years for 10,000 AI-related placements through Mitacs. The Université de Sherbrooke told The Pulse that the number of its collaborative research and innovation projects supported through Mitacs has approximately doubled since 2018-19, while the number of placements has approximately tripled. UdeS also said it already has projects involving both AI adoption and the application of AI to other fields. At Bishop’s, Butler said part of his role involves building the Computer Science department’s local presence, connecting students with regional partners and strengthening relationships with the Sherbrooke technology ecosystem. Those developments put universities in a difficult position. They have to prepare students to use the tools employers increasingly have available while also making sure graduates understand enough to recognize when those tools are wrong, incomplete or being applied to the wrong problem. The risk of losing human skills Butler does not see AI as risk-free. Later in the interview, he raised a separate concern: as AI becomes better at reading, writing, programming and other cognitive tasks, people could lose some of the underlying skills that historically helped produce new ideas. “The other danger is that we’re going to lose the human skills,” Butler said. He specifically mentioned reading and writing and argued that people could lose some of the lower-level understanding that contributes to breakthroughs. Butler said AI systems are based on existing human knowledge and argued that they become much more powerful when paired with a capable person. That tension runs through his view of the technology. AI can remove hours of routine work. It can allow beginners to perform tasks that once required substantial technical training. It can give experienced workers significant leverage. But the more capable the technology becomes, the more important it may be for people to develop the judgement needed to decide what should be done in the first place. For Butler, that is where education may have to change. Students still need to understand their field. They still need to know when something is wrong. And they still need to be able to make the final decision. But if AI increasingly handles the bottom of the cognitive pyramid, the value of a worker may depend less on how quickly they can perform the grunt work and more on whether they understand what the work is supposed to accomplish. Don’t miss the next story that affects your community. Join thousands of readers getting The Pulse every morning—plus breaking news alerts when it matters most. If you value this kind of local journalism, consider supporting it. Subscribe, share and like! Subscribe Share
Faraday Future Announces This Week’s Investor Weekly Report From YT Jia Has Been Rescheduled to September 28; FF EAI “Built in USA” Upstream & Downstream Business Partner Conference Part Two to Be Held September 29
FF Founder and Global CEO YT Jia’s Investor Weekly Report has been rescheduled for the afternoon of September 28 and will be released at its usual time. FF has invited 10 global partners to share insights on the EAI robotics industry, FF’s “Built in USA” strategy and related topics, highlighting the potential for collaboration between […]
Spacecraft burns up in atmosphere after failing to rescue NASA telescope
The robotic spacecraft that failed to rescue an aging NASA telescope has plunged back to Earth, disintegrating in the atmosphere, less than three months after launching on the bold mission.
Asimov's laws are not enough to keep robotics and AI safe
Asimov's fictional Three Laws of Robotics famously set safeguards, and tech observers today raise similar concerns about AI.
Lord Have Mercy as Researchers Create Walking Disembodied Hand Like That Little Guy From "The Addams Family"
Researches have created a autonomous robotic hand that can walk around and support its own weight all by itself.
Fall 2026 Collaboratorium Connects Midwest Researchers with Business Expertise - Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation
Bringing together scientific innovation and business talent from four leading Midwestern universities, the Fall 2026 Collaboratorium will feature 18 teams developing technologies in health care, energy storage, quantum computing, semiconductors, advanced materials, robotics, and more. Founded at the University of Chicago, the Collaboratorium now also features researchers from Northwestern University, Purdue University, and the University
A 14-year-old in a Colorado farm town built a robotic hand from LEGO bricks, fishing line and surgical tubing, then met a 7-year-old at a science fair wearing an $80,000 prosthetic arm she had already outgrown — his next version, 3D-printed, came in under $400, and NASA took him on as an intern at 17
When a teenager's LEGO creation outperformed a prosthetic costing two hundred times more, he realized the gap between innovation and access wasn't about engineering—it was about economics.
A 12-year-old in California built a Braille printer from a $350 Lego robotics kit for a school science fair, at a time when the cheapest commercial machine cost about $2,000, and Intel invested in it
When a middle schooler cracked an accessibility problem that the technology industry had left unsolved for decades, major investors took notice.
Arch Manning's changed demeanor on full display in Monday presser
The days of "off-the-cuff" Arch Manning are over. But after his controversy, the Texas QB is now robotic and emotionless.
University of Washington launches new Master of Science in Robotics
This autumn, the University of Washington (UW) is launching a Master of Science in Robotics, a 38-credit degree designed to meet the demands of one of the fastest-growing careers in technology.
Fire Awards spotlights Austin founders building satellites, AI infrastructure and next-gen healthcare
Austin's startup scene celebrates innovation with Fire Awards honoring 40 companies advancing AI, robotics, healthcare and energy technology.
Robotic lab sets up and runs optics experiments on demand
The process of building and running an optics experiment to analyze a material’s properties could one day be fully automated, MIT scientists say. Taking a step toward such a future, they developed a reconfigurable, robotic optics laboratory.
The Missing Science Of Robotic Systems
More capable robots require systems that realize capabilities through appropriate paradigms, compose them across time, distribute them across heterogeneous compute, and govern them under explicit constraints.
Technologies, Math Research Get Lift from CAREER Awards
By Office of Media Relations | Dr. Waseem Abbas, assistant professor of systems engineering in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science, uses lightweight modular small quadcopters, a type of drone, for indoor aerial robotics research. Abbas received a Faculty Early Career Development Program award from the National Science Foundation to support his work […]
Robots and AI find a hidden reaction inside 135-year-old chemistry
Chemical reactions are often written as simple equations: starting materials go in, and a product comes out. In reality, the samesubstrates can follow many different pathways depending on their concentrations, temperature, catalysts, and other conditions. Exploring all of these possibilities by hand is practically impossible. Now, advances in laboratory automation and chemical artificial intelligence are allowing researchers to systematically map this vast “reaction hyperspace”—and uncover chemistry that may have remained hidden even in reactions studied for more than a century. To address this question, scientists led by Prof. Bartosz A. GRZYBOWSKI, Director of the Center for Algorithmic and Robotized Synthesis within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) used an automated robotic platform to explore 960 different sets of conditions for the Biginelli reaction, a classic multicomponent reaction first reported in 1891.
INPEX CEO explains how AI will 'completely transform' its business
INPEX CEO Takayuki Ueda discusses how AI and robotics could shape the company's exploration, drilling and operations, as well as the challenge of keeping pace with rapid technological change.
Super science: STEM on full display at annual Endress+Hauser career and education forum
Robotic creations zoomed across the floor, dodging students and their parents while completing tasks.
Robots reshape the future of homebuilding
America’s housing industry is facing a severe labor shortage and a longstanding productivity problem, creating growing interest in robotics and automation to increase homebuilding capacity, CNBC reports. The U.S. is short roughly 1.2 million homes, while nearly 300,000 construction jobs were open at the end of 2025. Labor shortages cost builders an estimated $11 billion […]
CEO Jensen Huang offers candid advice to departing Nvidia staff
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang gives blunt feedback to departing employees, influencing startups like Flexion Robotics and INT21 with direct insights.
Skilled Nursing Dealbook: Norbert Health Raises $14M to Scale Robotic Care; Black Pearl Completes Tender Offer for Selectis
Investment group Black Pearl completed a tender offer for Selectis Health. Meanwhile, Norbert Health raised $14M in Series A funding to expand robotic
Garry Tan urges separating ‘science fact from science fiction’ amid AI doomsday fears
CNBC’s Kate Rooney sat down for an exclusive interview with Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan to discuss the boom in so-called “hard tech” robotics startups. And discussing the increasingly heated debate over AI safety and how Silicon Valley should handle the rapidly advancing technology.
Boston Dynamics spinoff looks to build robots for entertainment
Dynamic Creatures is building theme park robots on Chinese hardware. Europe's own social robotics champion was sold to a Shenzhen buyer last year.
Dynamic Creatures Emerges from Stealth to Launch New Category of Mobile, Interactive Character Robots for Hospitality and Entertainment
Founded by former Boston Dynamics, Google, and Robotics and AI Institute leaders, company launches with an official Boston Dynamics partnership and major theme park engagementBOSTON, Sept. 08, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Dynamic Creatures, a robotics company designing and building interactive character robots for entertainment and hospitality brands, today emerged from stealth. The company is creating a new category of mobile characters that move naturally through guest environments, understand the
Marshall Health performs first roboticassisted shoulder replacement surgery in WV
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — Marshall Health Network Orthopaedic Surgeon John J. Jasko, M.D., performed West Virginia’s first robotic arm-assisted shoulder replacement surgery using Mako SmartRobotics this week. Known as Mako Shoulder, […]
Anthropic’s Claude Can Now Autonomously Run Science Experiments With Lab Equipment
A new system allows agents to orchestrate complex experimental processes and extends Anthropic's reach into the physical world.
Commercial Spacecraft for NASA’s Swift Boost Continues Tech Demo
This week, Katalyst Space conducted in-space tests and maneuvers to exercise the capabilities of its robotic servicing spacecraft, LINK.
NSF launches three new Science and Technology Centers with $90M investment in transformative research
The U.S. National Science Foundation is investing $90 million over five years to support three new NSF Science and Technology Centers (NSF STC). These centers will advance American leadership in science and technology, strengthen the nation’s STEM workforce, and accelerate innovation in fields ranging from artificial intelligence and biotechnology to fusion energy and robotics., , , , The three centers will bring together researchers from universities, national laboratories, industry, and oth...
Seoul National University of Science and Technology Develops AI Framework to Test and Improve Vision-System Robustness
/PRNewswire/ -- In computer vision and robotics, ensuring that AI systems remain reliable under real-world conditions is a growing challenge. Deep neural...
U.S. Special Envoy for Global Partnerships Paolo Zampolli’s Meeting with Uzbekistan's Minister of Sports and National Olympic Committee
U.S. Special Envoy for Global Partnerships Paolo Zampolli’s Meeting with Uzbekistan’s Minister of Sports and National Olympic Committee Tashkent, Uzbekistan – August 31, 2026 – U.S. Special Envoy for Global Partnerships Paolo Zampolli met with the leadership of the Ministry of Sports and the National Olympic Committee (NOC) of Uzbekistan to discuss the current state of the U.S.-Uzbekistan sports cooperation and prospects for its continued growth. Discussions focused on strengthening international sports cooperation, advancing the Olympic movement, and identifying promising joint projects. Special Envoy Zampolli congratulated Uzbekistan on its selection as the host of the 2027 World Fencing Championships and welcomed Uzbekistan’s possible participation in a planned World Robotics Organization. Special Envoy Zampolli also congratulated the people of Uzbekistan on the 35th anniversary of the country’s independence. “Sport brings people together like nothing else,” said Special Envoy Zampolli. This engagement builds on Special Envoy Zampolli’s prior meetings with Uzbekistan’s national sports leaders and teams and reflects the United States’ sustained commitment to sports diplomacy as a bridge for cultural exchange and international cooperation.
Hugging Face says Microduck sales topped $2.6 million in 24 hours
The future of robotics can waddle. Hugging Face said its bot-maker, Pollen Robotics, recorded over $2.6 million in sales of Microducks in 24 hours.
Scripps Research and collaborators awarded $19.5 million to establish an open-access autonomous chemistry laboratory
A new award from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) totaling $19.5 million over four years will expand robotic systems, analytical instrumentation and dedicated staff at the Automated Synthesis Facility at Scripps Research by supporting a collaborative effort among Scripps Research, UCLA and Sunthetics (an AI-for-chemistry company) to establish a nationally accessible, fully automated chemistry laboratory. This “Chemistry Node” will be one of 20 AI-enabled NSF Test Bed: Toward a Network of Programmable Cloud Laboratory (NSF PCL) nodes across the United States, which will test, scale and demonstrate new methods and tools that advance automated science and engineering, driving discoveries across a wide range of fields.
3 key takeaways from Bill Gates' stark warning about AI and jobs
Bill Gates warned that a coming robotics boom could reshape construction, hospitality, and the social contract.
‘Smart’ diabetes probiotic; China’s missile AI tracker: 7 science highlights
From a proposed South China Sea robotic fortress to HIV cases at Wuhan port, here are some highlights from SCMP’s recent science reporting.
BlackBerry CEO says robotics is one of its fastest-growing businesses
BlackBerry CEO John Giamatteo says robotics is one of QNX’s fastest-growing businesses as the company expands its software beyond cars.
Patients could see smaller incisions, shorter recoveries thanks to U.Va. Health robotic heart surgery program
U.Va. Health has launched Virginia’s first dedicated robotic heart surgery program as a less invasive alternative to traditional open-heart surgery.
Xpeng says its robotics business raised over $900 million in first funding round
China's Xpeng said on Monday its robotics business raised over $900 million in its first funding round, led by IDG and Gaorong Ventures and with Tencent and Alibaba as strategic investors.
Xpeng says its robotics business raised over $900 million in first funding round
BEIJING, Aug 24 (Reuters) - China's Xpeng said on Monday its robotics business raised over $900 million in its first funding round, led by IDG and Gaorong Ventures and with Tencent and Alibaba as strategic investors. Xpeng's robotics busine...
Three Vandalia Health hospitals earn SRC Network of Excellence designation in robotic surgery
Three Vandalia Health hospitals earned SRC’s Network of Excellence in Robotic Surgery designation, a first for West Virginia. The honor recognizes rigorous quality and safety standards, advanced technology and 14 distinguished surgeons.
Three Binghamton University professors win prestigious NSF CAREER Awards
More than $1.8 million in grant funding will be used to pursue groundbreaking research in robotics, materials science, and urban planning.
ECU Health surgeon first in state to use robotics during lung lobe removal
Dr. Robert Allman, a cardiothoracic surgeon with ECU Health, performed the lobectomies earlier this summer.
5 bizarre ways space experts want to clean up Earth’s orbit
Sticky satellites? Space harpoons? Robotic tentacles? Laser cannons? Space lassos? The fight against space junk continues
I used Gemini and Grok side-by-side for a month on Android; one clearly dominated
One assistant felt built for Android
Week Ends Aboard Station With Robotics, Spacewalk Reviews, and Science
Expedition 75 ended the week studying Canadarm2 robotic arm maneuvers and reviewing procedures for a spacewalk to support the removal and replacement of a space-to-ground antenna on Tuesday, Aug. 18. Science remained on Friday’s schedule as the International Space Station residents studied space exercise techniques, explored aerodynamic drag forces, and more.
AI needs science’s search history
“Actually, that’s where the gold is,” said Alasdair Russell, my graduate school friend who leads a pre-clinical genome editing group at Cambridge. He was talking about the winding road of science that is omitted from published papers. “When you’re discussing how to do the experiment, and why this way is better than another way, and what does the data really mean? I know what it shows, but what does it mean?” At RAAIS 2026, he described how his group has begun logging the twisting path of discovery as it happens, recording the verbal and written exchanges that normally disappear. Ideas become nodes in a living graph: they branch when a meeting produces two plausible experiments, merge when separate lines of evidence converge, and go dark when someone quietly stops pursuing them. In his implementation, one agent scores novelty, while another tries to learn “how scientists think and how they navigate through a complex world of data,” so that high-potential nodes can trigger deeper investigation. As frontier AI labs deploy agents toward scientific discovery, giving AI authentic scientific taste remains a trillion-dollar dilemma. The bottleneck is that the record we have kept for centuries of science might be insufficient to get us there. The experiments that never make the paper Peter Medawar, 1960 Nobel laureate and “father of transplantation,” asked in 1963 whether the scientific paper was a fraud, and answered yes: the form of the paper misrepresents the thinking that produced it. Sixty years on, the diagnosis is unchanged. A paper presents a clean progression from hypothesis to result to conclusion. Lost along the way are the unconventional theories, the abandoned or unaffordable methods, and the underwhelming and inconclusive data. It reads like a browser history with every dead end deleted: the ten open tabs, the four rephrased queries, the wrong turn down a subforum. All scrubbed, leaving one clean path from question to answer as the canonical path. What has changed since then is that the discarded material is now worth something. No high-impact journal wants these artifacts, but raw trial and error is the most likely source of the training data required to develop scientific intuition, or what researchers call taste. Earlier attempts to capture the discards were motivated by scientific integrity. The Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine launched in 2002 to publish rigorous studies that disputed established models or exposed ineffective treatments. Its archive preserved negative conclusions after they had become papers, rather than the live alternatives and arguments that produced them. BioMed Central closed it in 2017, saying the mission had been served now that other journals publish null results. A less generous reading is that in fifteen years it published around 200 papers because almost nobody wants to read a negative result, let alone write one up when it will not count toward academic tenure. AI models are different. Even an uninteresting negative result can be useful, provided it is labeled. Earlier this year, Anthropic put a version of this to the test. The company pulled 129 decision points from real Claude Code sessions between January and March 2026, showed models the work up to a human detour, and asked what should happen next. Claude Mythos Preview beat the human choice 64% of the time, while Opus 4.5 managed 51%. The comparison was tilted toward the models because Anthropic deliberately chose moments where the human decision had room for improvement. On 127 further scenarios where the human action was already strong, the models improved on it only about 20% of the time. The study was possible because Anthropic’s researchers work inside a tool that logs by default. The reasoning, detours and outcome are produced in the same working environment. Biology has no equivalent. Its reasoning happens in hallways, at benches, in Slack threads and on whiteboards, while the outcome arrives weeks later somewhere else. The record has to emerge from the work itself. Ask scientists to reconstruct it afterwards and we’ll create another polished account. Subscribe A log is not a label Before any of this becomes training data, a negative result has to say what failed. The first paper published in the Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine examined 234 negative studies across five leading medical journals. Only 30% discussed statistical power, and half clearly defined a primary outcome. Tell a model an experiment failed, without telling it whether the assay was underpowered, a reagent had degraded, or the hypothesis was simply wrong, and it will learn noise with confidence. Decision histories have a second missing label too. When a lab considers five experiments and runs one, only the chosen branch returns an outcome. The other four are experimental counterfactuals. Researchers call this the selective labels problem: the data reveal results only for the actions someone chose to take. Such a record can teach a model to imitate a lab’s taste, but it cannot establish that the taste was good. It also smuggles local constraints into general lessons. A lab that never ran cryo-EM because it did not own a microscope teaches a model that cryo-EM is rarely the right call. Alasdair’s nodes preserve the candidate set, which is the necessary first step. To be useful, each decision record needs six fields: The evidence available at that moment, and nothing that arrived later. The candidates considered, including the ones dismissed in a sentence. For each candidate: the expected result, the confidence attached to it, and the cost in time and money. The route chosen, and the reason. What happened next. How the evidence changed the scientist’s view. These must be timestamped before the outcome, because hindsight turns uncertainty into inevitability. Disagreement also has to survive. Averaging three scientists into one clean rationale reproduces exactly the information loss we are trying to fix. But there is an obvious failure mode here. Once decisions are logged and scored, people log for the record post-facto. Anyone who has watched an electronic lab notebook fill up with retrospective tidying knows how quickly a research tool becomes a compliance exercise. A record that costs a scientist ten minutes of honest reflection per decision is worth far more than one that costs an hour of performance. A publication initiative called Registered Reports offers a useful starting point. Here, researchers submit their rationale, methods and analysis plan for peer review before the data exist, and the journal commits in principle to publish if they follow the approved plan. Nature has now expanded the format across every field it covers. This approach to paper writing timestamps intent before the outcome, but it freezes one plan. A useful search history must also preserve how the plan changed, which alternatives were rejected, when, and on what evidence. Subscribe Run the runner-up Autonomous labs show what happens when decisions and outcomes are connected in a loop. Liverpool’s mobile robotic chemist ran 688 experiments over eight days in a ten-variable formulation space. A batched Bayesian search used each result to choose the next experiments and found photocatalyst mixtures six times more active than the starting formulations. Every completed experiment changed what the system did next. The robot optimized within a goal and search space that humans had already chosen. It did not decide which scientific question mattered. So what this work demonstrates is narrower, but still useful: a search history pays off when the options return standardized outcomes quickly. Open-ended biology is harder because branches can take weeks and the discarded alternatives may never be run. Some exploration therefore has to be bought. Where two branches are plausible and the stakes justify the cost, a lab should sometimes run the runner-up. Otherwise the record captures what today’s scientists usually chose and stays silent on what they systematically overlooked. A funder could ring-fence a small fraction of a grant for the branch not taken, provided that the decision record and the outcome are both deposited. That costs money, but so does having every lab rediscover the same abandoned path. Test whether taste transfers When it comes time to evaluate if our new AI system exhibits taste, the comparison should run across laboratories and fields. At selected decision points in a live research campaign, we should freeze the six fields: the evidence, the candidates, expected results, confidence, costs and the choice made. Experts then rank the options before the outcomes are known, and those outcomes are checked independently later. We could give models one of two diets - papers alone, or papers plus decision histories - and ask them to rank the next experiment on unfamiliar projects. Then, we score information gained per dollar and week, calibration, and how quickly weak branches are abandoned. If histories improve choices only inside the lab that produced them, they amount to useful organizational memory. If they improve choices on unfamiliar problems elsewhere, Alasdair’s group will have captured something science has never managed to write down: a transferable record of taste. Until that happens, a scientific search history is a promising record, not yet a training set.
Northrop's robot space mechanic is a new way to keep satellites at work longer
The Mission Robotic Vehicle is making the first attempt to attach a new thruster to an aging satellite.
A robotic heart surgery specialist was fired by Main Line Health for blowing the whistle on complications, lawsuit
Gianluca Torregrossa joined Main Line Health in 2021 under a lucrative five-year contract. Now he is suing the health system, saying he was retaliated for exposing a pattern of bad patient outcomes.
Boaty McBoatface and pals’ perilous mission | Investors Lab
Operating within a global underwater robotics market valued at over $5 billion, the market is rich with manufacturers
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Robot24.com Launches Global Robotics News Platform With Original Reporting, Business News and Correspondents on Every Continent
Robot24.com has launched as a new global robotics news platform dedicated to covering the companies, machines, people and technologies shaping t...
High Volume Robotic-Assisted Bronchoscopies Offer Patients Exceptional Expertise
Pennsylvania pulmonology team surpasses 1,300 procedures
University of Maryland science camp interns present research findings
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Shanghai science forum photos show China's AI and robotics advances in rivalry with US
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Photos show Chinese companies showcasing AI technology and robots at science forum
BEIJING (AP) — China's leading technology companies showcased hundreds of cutting-edge products at the World AI Conference in Shanghai — from advanced robotics to artificial intelligence systems.
Shanghai science forum photos show China's AI and robotics advances in rivalry with US
BEIJING (AP) — China's leading technology companies showcased hundreds of cutting-edge products at the
Kraken Robotics Announces $35 Million in New Orders and Business Update
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Corewell performs world's first documented single-port robotic mitral valve repair
Royal Oak resident Patrick O’Brien underwent the first single-port robotic mitral valve repair on June 30.
Less sleep = less health; Led Zeppelin in the OR; dangers of people-pleasing; plus other stories with Vanderbilt Health sources
Prevention interviewed Beth Malow, MD, Professor of Neurology and Pediatrics in the Vanderbilt Sleep Division, for a story about two randomized trials published in Annals of Internal Medicinethat found decreasing sleep by just 1.5 hours each night was linked with increases in body weight, waist circumference, and sedentary time in adults with elevated cardiometabolic risk. Yahoo Healthalso picked up the story. WTVF News Channel 5 reporter Nikki Hauser interviewed Ashish Shah, MD, Professor and Chair of Cardiac Surgery, for a new video podcast series called “Why Nashville” where she interviews interesting people doing interesting work about why they came to Nashville and how it is going. Among the revelations: his go-to OR music includes Led Zeppelin and AC/DC. Everyday Health interviewed Aaron Brinen, PsyD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, for a story about the TikTok trend that encourages women to speak up about their concerns or they’ll develop an autoimmune disease. Overall, people suggest that suppressing feelings of anger, minimizing your own needs, or people-pleasing raises your risk. Telemundo Nashville broadcast a story on cyclosporiasis that quotes both William Schaffner, MD, professor of Preventive Medicine, and Juan C. Salazar, MD, MPH, chair of the Department of Pediatrics and system Pediatrician-in-Chief for Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt. Schaffner also spoke to WKRN News 2 about measles and The Cutabout shingles and long distance running. WREG (Memphis) and others picked up the measles story as well. CNN reporter Deidre McPhillips interviewed John Trahanas, MD, Assistant Professor of Cardiac Surgery, and Director of Thoracic Aortic Surgery, for a story about aortic dissection in last week’s death of U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham. The Nashville Post published a story by freelance reporter Leah Hunter on robotic surgery, including a patient story and numerous quotes from Sekhar Padmanabhan, MD, Assistant Professor of Surgery in the Division of Surgical Oncology.
Doctors in Royal Oak perform world’s first single-port robotic heart surgery
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Heart surgeon makes history, performs first robotic procedure of its kind
A surgeon in Michigan has performed the world’s first single-port robotic mitral valve repair.
Corewell Health performs world's first documented single-port robotic mitral valve repair
Corewell Health™ has successfully performed the world’s first documented single-port robotic mitral valve repair, marking a major milestone in the evolution...
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DGIST secures four projects under the Ministry of Science and ICT’s Group Research Support Program, spanning basic science to cutting-edge deep tech
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Meet the Floating Robot Companion Designed for Safe, Friendly Human Interaction
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Woman, 45, Underwent the First Robotic Single-Port Nipple-Sparing Mastectomy Performed in the U.S by a Robot Named Carol
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New robotic heart mimics common, mysterious condition to help researchers study it
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SKF eyes role in humanoid robotics business
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Greenland is being swarmed by autonomous drones and underwater robots as scientists race to answer one question: How close is Earth to a climate tipping point?
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Renting makes robots affordable for work and play
Robotics tech is changing fast, so for many it makes sense to rent a robot.
Apple veterans launch a $33 million fund for manufacturing tech
Omni Ventures will back pre-seed startups building AI, robotics, and automation tools for manufacturing.
Scientists want to quarantine alien life on the Moon before it reaches Earth
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Small Business Tech News: Big Brands Rolling Out Robotics And Rolling Back AI
GM, Santander and other companies are expanding robotics and AI, but other companies are having doubts.
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NASA, Partners Update Launch Date for Mission to Boost Swift
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Launch of Swift Boost Mission Delayed, Teams Reviewing Data
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ISS repair spacewalk highlights concerns about station health
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How should European scientists respond to the US AI kill switch?
Earlier in June, Europe’s worst fears of technological dependence were confirmed when the White House ordered the AI firm Anthropic to stop non-US citizens using its leading models. This kill-switch moment crystalised anxieties in Brussels that the continent, lagging the US on the creation of leading-edge AI models, is now a technological of vassal of Washington. The shock has specific implications for European scientists and universities. Some governments are now worried that with AI being integrated into labs, Donald Trump now has his finger hovering over an off switch for European science. “Having restrictions on this tool, it can have an impact on our own research,” said France’s research minister, Philippe Baptiste, at the VivaTech conference in Paris on June 18.Baptiste, himself a former academic, said that colleagues in mathematics had recently warned him they were now cut off from leading-edge US models, risking their work. “This model is not available anymore now because of the US restriction, and for the first time this had an impact on mathematics,” a field where large language models (LLMs) are making a significant contribution, said Baptiste. So, should European scientists avoid relying on US models in the future? Or would this be a self-harming overreaction? And how is AI being used in science, anyway? What happened?On June 12, it emerged that Washington, citing cybersecurity concerns, had ordered Anthropic to stop non-US citizens using two models: Claude Mythos 5, and Claude Fable 5, a version of Mythos but with guardrails to prevent abuse. Anthropic said Washington’s concerns were overblown. But forced to follow the order, yet with no way to check who was using the models, the company suddenly shut down access for everyone, US citizens included. There’s still no agreement on how to restore broad access. But last week, Bloomberg reported that select US companies, and the US government, still had access to Mythos despite the ban, but the EU’s cybersecurity agency Enisa had been shut out. Class division of researchersIn the longer term, access outside the US should be restored, said Marcel Salathé, co-director of the AI centre at the Federal Polytechnic School of Lausanne (EPFL), because a permanent restriction would be financially ruinous to US AI firms. “Even Trump will eventually budge to economic pressure,” he said.However, US AI firms might end up operating rather like banks, doing due diligence on users of their leading-edge AI models, he went on.European scientists are unlikely to fall foul of such checks, he said. But having a Chinese postgraduate in their lab, or doing a type of research the US disapproved of, could potentially result in access being denied. “It will create a sort of class division of researchers,” he said. More than frontier modelsHowever, successfully deploying AI in science is about far more than just having access to leading LLMs such as Mythos.Instead, many science-specific tools, most famously Alphafold, which predicts protein folding structures, require “far less” computing power to train than frontier models, well within the capabilities of European supercomputers, according to a recent analysis by the Arq Foundation, a Brussel-based AI think tank. Instead, tools such as Alphafold are possible because certain fields, like protein folding, weather prediction or astronomy, have large, clean, standardised datasets that can be used to train predictive models. Rather than compute, “data is the central constraint for AI for science,” the report says. For example, a less powerful physics model trained on CERN’s data “will be more valuable than the best model without certain data,” said Bengüsu Özcan, author of the report. European advantage?Europe could therefore steal a march by using its scientific data and infrastructure to create models US digital giants cannot. “They might actually match or go even beyond what these big [US] companies are doing,” said Özcan.Indeed, some European start-ups hope to create automated testing labs to create the kind of standardised data that could speed up the discovery of new materials. Materials scientists say there’s currently too little data to train models. AI scientistsHowever, even if the bottleneck for AI in science is often data, rather than compute, being at the mercy of the US for LLM access could still become a problem for European scientists. A new class of “AI scientists” based on leading LLMs is also emerging, Özcan’s report says.Unlike domain-specific tools like Alphafold, these try to automate day-to-day scientific work, by providing an overarching tool that coordinates specific models to synthesise existing literature, generate hypotheses or run analysis of data. The problem for Europe, however, is that these tools are sometimes based on US leading models. Google Deepmind’s AI Co-Scientist, for example, is built on Google’s Gemini LLM. Systematic failureThese scientific automation tools are still in their early stages, and still exhibit “systematic failures on scientific tasks,” Özcan’s report says. One of the problems is that the messy, day-to-day process of scientific discovery is largely not documented, meaning LLMs don’t have a good source of data to learn how scientists actually work. Meanwhile, some tasks, such as literature synthesis, don’t typically require access to leading edge models.However, the performance of AI scientific assistants could improve as companies such as Google pour resources into developing them. Rely on US“Unfortunately, for scientific assistants, there is not much we can do right now except rely on US frontier AI,” said Antoine Bosselut, a natural language processing expert based at EPFL. Chinese-built open models, which can run on local computers, lessening the risk of a shutdown, are touted as one alternative to US dependence. There’s also Mistral, once seen as Europe’s main AI hope, but the Paris-based company has seen its recent models fall behind in performance. But the Chinese alternatives are generally not as capable as US frontier AI models, said Bosselut, unless paired with fiddly, custom tools that allows them to act as independent agents. “Most scientists do not have the time,” he said. Don’t jump ship yetAlthough the kill switch moment is seen a warning shot for European scientists, it doesn’t mean labs should abandon US AI tools immediately. “I do not think the right response is simply to abandon US-based models and systems under the banner of sovereignty or independence,” said Mattias Björnmalm, secretary general of the Cesaer university association. “That would be an overreaction.”Related articlesEuropean sovereignty in AI requires ‘ugly trade-offs,’ say experts Robotic lab start-up makes case for €500M EU-funded materials testing facilityAI in science: is it useful? Instead, European researchers need to ask themselves whether they’re becoming dependent on technology that could be turned off in Washington, said Özcan. “They might not see this today, but they should really start asking this question,” she said. European researchers need a plan B, said Salathé. “I would recommend to every researcher, very proactively explore alternatives.”Own toolsIn addition, Björnmalm and others want European research institutions to develop their own scientific AI tools.Instead of signing AI deals with US digital giants, European universities should be using this money to create their own models, which may end up being superior for research, said Sabine Leonelli, an expert on the use of AI in science at the Technical University of Munich. “Universities in Europe seem to be happy to sign commercial contracts with US companies on the assumption [their AI tools] are better,” she said. But US frontier LLMs are typically opaque, and have been developed without independent scientific input, she said. “This is not good enough for science.”Last year, Swiss researchers released Apertus, an LLM designed to be completely transparent, from its development methods to its training data. The idea is that this makes scientific tools built on top of the model far more reproducible than with closed, commercial alternatives.“Europe needs more of this: serious capacity-building that gives researchers, universities and companies credible options,” said Björnmalm.