The shape of things to come? https://www.ncl.ac.uk/press/articles/latest/2018/05/first3dprintingofcorneas/ What will they be 3D printing next?
I do wonder when A.I. becomes so advanced that it's gonna start solving diseases before human researchers can. You'd assume that a computer doesn't have the same fallacies as men when it comes to desiring money or status and thus would just go on researching the disease instead of trying to garner a career.
Machine learning techniques would certainly find patterns in data that humans wouldn't but care needs to be taken that they are not superficial features of the data or collection devices. But the big issue is availability of large volumes of data. Here there is work on things like nano sensors and micro fluidics that may help produce cheap accurate sensors that could collect much higher volumes of data than the current lab based processes. This feels like a precursor to using ML techniques.
I know that at least one 3d printer manufacturer is printing parts of its printers. But I don't think they deliver half a printer and expect you to print the rest out yourself. But they are working on printing metal, electronics etc so perhaps one day!
The concept of Self-Replicating Machines has been around for a while, going at least as far back as the 1940's when the idea was fleshed out by mathematician John von Neumann. For that reason, they are sometimes referred to as "von Neumann Machines." The concept was rapidly linked to space exploration as a way of dealing with the problem of a galaxy so vast that only self-replicating probes, capable of increasing their numbers exponentially, would seem have any hope of surveying even a portion of it. The idea naturally found its way into science fiction. If I recall correctly, in the sequels to his novel "2001: A Space Odyssey," Arthur C. Clarke said that the alien monoliths of the story could function as, or simply were, self-replicating von Neumann machines.