Most scientific instruments currently discard rich streams of commands, data and metadata from which AI systems could learn to conduct experiments with expert-level decision-making and troubleshooting skills. Recording and using this data at scale requires rethinking what data to store, incentivizing large-scale cooperation, and determining how to quantify the reliability of such autonomous systems.
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We thank Ivo Vellekoop for discussions.
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H.P. and N.N. conceived the project and wrote the manuscript together.
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Pinkard, H., Norlin, N. The missing data for intelligent scientific instruments. Nat Methods (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41592-025-02995-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41592-025-02995-7
