Signs of the Singularity

I saw some recent pieces come out in Wired and Technology Review on automating scientific discovery. One was a computer program able to extrapolate some scientific laws, and another was an automated lab capable of testing its own theories. I've worked before as an intern on the Prometheus project, so I have some experience with the field. People have been working on such things for the last fifty years or, and making only incremental process. I'm not certain how much of a breakthrough these new developments are, other than to make Wired and Technology Review, but it looks like we're getting closer to the point where we can turn computers on large data sets from complex systems and have them explain, or at least greatly speed up the explanation of, what's going on. When we get to that point, well, we'll be a good step closer to the singularity. Now, to look up what's going on with getting computers to engineer things on their own...