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HERA measured quantum devices on its own, and a blinded trial against a human expert matched the sealed conclusion

AspireAI community · arXiv
Language model agents now carry out real laboratory measurements, but their scientific conclusions only matter if they survive scrutiny, which needs controlled studies because models are stochastic and the context they are given steers their conclusions. HERA is an autonomous agent that performs cryogenic transport measurements of quantum devices, drawing on a knowledge base curated by lab members holding measurement protocols, software tools and literature references. It was assessed through a blinded trial against an expert on the stacking order of two multilayer graphene devices, an ablation of the knowledge base, and hundreds of offline replays where models designed the trial's central measurement without running it. HERA's conclusions matched the expert's sealed conclusions on both devices, and with the knowledge base present every model designed better measurements and reasoned more soundly, and it was then tasked with finding and characterizing superconductivity in a different material system.
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