A computer has managed to develop a new scientific theory using only its artificial intelligence

At Marginal Revolution Alex Tabarrok links to a Wired story about how

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.

What the computer discovered was that the process requires three known molecules and two proteins that were previously unknown. This discovery, says Levin, “represents the most comprehensive model of planarian regeneration found to date”.

“One of the most remarkable aspects of the project was that the model it found was not a hopelessly-tangled network that no human could actually understand, but a reasonably simple model that people can readily comprehend,” he adds. All this suggests to me that artificial intelligence can help with every aspect of science, not only data mining but also inference of meaning of the data,”

Read more here.