The laboratory became an agent frontier
AI-for-science programs made a useful distinction visible in 2025. Models can help search literature, write code and organize experiments, but discovery still depends on measurement, interpretation and the judgment to reject an attractive result.
The laboratory is therefore a demanding environment for autonomy. It supplies tools and data, but it also punishes hidden assumptions. An agent must preserve provenance from hypothesis to instrument to result, or it turns scientific speed into scientific fog.
The best research agent is not the one that sounds most certain. It is the one that leaves scientists with a clearer chain of evidence.
