All Hail Our New Robot Overlords

Couple of interesting articles about the impeding annihilation of the human race.

The first is about a robot which has been programmed to employ the scientific method and identify scientifically interesting results. Basically all the human "scientist" has to do is restock reagents and do general housekeeping periodically. Where is Isaac Asimov when you need him? Given enough computing power and sufficient time, could a machine like this derive new life or develop a biological shell for itself? I know it's just doing yeast experiments now, but wow.

The second is a computer that can derive the laws of physics simply by being given real world data as input. Show it the apple falling, it tells you about gravity....sorta.

Again, not to belabor the point, but given sufficient computing power, could these things tell us stuff that Hawking can't?

Next up, Ray Kurzweil's singularity and computers designing better computers. Once that happens, we're off to the races.