Brandon Wang, Andrei S. Tyrin, Daniil A. Boikocs.LG
Language models are playing an increasingly important role in laboratory science, performing tasks such as experiment planning, execution, and post-hoc analysis. However, precisely measuring their abilities is difficult, as scientific capabilities require a mixture of both problem-solving skills and domain-specific intuition. Existing evaluations rarely measure the capabilities required to make reliable decisions in a physical laboratory and often rely on public data that may have appeared in model training corpora. We introduce onepot-Bench 0, a proprietary benchmark suite for evaluating language models on synthetic chemistry capabilities relevant to wet-lab execution. onepot-Bench 0 comprises three complementary evaluations: ChemAbacus measures tool-free cheminformatics literacy and numerical reasoning; SynthRefusal characterizes safety and refusal behavior across a variety of benign, controlled, and designer-drug targets; and SynthBench evaluates reaction-outcome prediction and catalyst selection using private experimental data generated in our laboratory. Together, these evaluations probe basic competency, reliability, and deeper knowledge, all skills which are required for reliable performance in the lab.
Zhenning Yang, Yuhan Chen, Patrick Tser Jern Kon +5eess.SY cs.AI
To unleash the full potential of AI for Science, we must untether the agents from a purely digital environment. The agent's ability to control and explore in real-world labs is essential because the physical lab remains foundational to scientific discovery. While some tasks can be performed on a computer (e.g., data analysis, running simulated experiments), Eureka moments could occur at any time while operating lab instruments (e.g., when a scientist notices unexpected clues, intuition may prompt a real-time course change). Although autonomous labs are on the rise, which expose programmable APIs to control scientific instruments via software, bridging the gap between increasingly powerful AI agents and automated lab equipment requires innovation that draws insights from computer systems. We propose a new paradigm called ``Experiment-as-Code (EaC) Labs,'' where a core concept is to encode experiments as declarative configurations that can be compiled down to device-level APIs. AI agents come up with hypotheses and experiments, written as an ensemble of declarative configurations. The systems layer performs program analysis, safety checks, resource assignment, and job orchestration. Finally, programmatic experimentation occurs via actuating the device APIs. This is a general stack that is science-, lab-, and instrument-independent, representing a novel synthesis across the physical, systems, and intelligence layers to unleash the next breakthrough in AI for Science.