“During the pandemic, supporting testing nationwide through the work we did at Ginkgo, the number of labs across the country where the operator loads the 96-well plate in a flipped direction is like double-digit percentages. The robot didn't do anything wrong. It's the human in the loop that is still part of autonomous science that we're not observing.”
Masters of Scale · Startups & Venture · October 2026
Wegrzyn, skeptical of fully closed-loop autonomous labs, says labs point cameras at the robots on the assumption they'll make mistakes, while ordinary human error goes uncaptured. She sees robots as partners that take over tedious steps, like testing 50 buffer concentrations.
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…for the next Sputnik moment. Let's jump back in. The very idea of experimentation, it is by its definition, you know, messy because you're not really sure where you're going. And I guess sometimes you might find things that you didn't realize, and sometimes you don't really know how you got there.
…concentrations, but I can outsource that to my robotic partner ARM that's here at the lab with me. That is where I see automation, at least in the near term, really empowering the scientist before we get to a world, I don't even know when it would be, where it's full closed-loop automation. I mean, you hear about these autonomous labs, but there are, I'll tell you from during my time, even during the pandemic, supporting testing nationwide through the work we did at Ginkgo, the number of labs across the country where the operator loads the 96-well plate in a flipped direction is like double-digit percentages. The robot didn't do anything wrong. It's the human in the loop that is still part of autonomous science that we're not observing. In those labs, you have many cameras pointing at the robots because we all assume the robot's going to do something silly, but it's like just regular human error is not captured.
Well, I can see as you give that example why some people though are resist it because they don't want to be caught having put something in the wrong way. I mean, none of us want to be called out for having done something the wrong way.
I mean, sometimes the stakes are really high, though, right? You know, some of our diagnostics customers are delivering a genetic result to a patient. And so most scientists, I think, want to do the right thing and also want to have the information that they can be coached. By understanding where…
You and your co-founder, Amory, you both worked at Ginkgo Bioworks, which focuses on genetics. Like, why not work on applying AI in that area? I mean, biotech has so much runway ahead of it. There's so many different areas.
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