Language is not enough - by Erika Alden DeBenedictis

What LLMs can - and can’t - do for lab automation

“We should program the robots in English” - Judy Savitskaya, April 2022 The need to write code has always been a huge barrier that prevents lab automation from becoming widespread. Historically, biologists weren’t taught programming. As a result, robot manufacturers in life science usually present users with GUI interfaces. Short term, GUIs are a win that allow users to quickly get robots to do simple tasks in a no-code setting. Long term, GUIs shoot lab automation in the foot. Protocols developed in a GUI just can’t be that sophisticated or scalable. This raises a big question: if lab…

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