"Questions Arise Over Autonomous Lab's Material Discoveries, Analysis Suggests"
A critique of a paper reporting the discovery of over 40 novel materials using an autonomous laboratory guided by AI has raised doubts, with a new analysis finding systematic errors in both computational and experimental work. The original report's use of AI to conduct Rietveld refinement and its failure to recognize substitution and site mixing in inorganic solids led to misidentifications and assumptions of new compounds. While the A-Lab team argues that they successfully synthesized the reported compounds, critics emphasize the need for AI systems to be trained to handle complexities in materials analysis and caution against expecting AI to revolutionize technical fields overnight.