Update 8/17/23: Unfortunately, Nature has debunked the idea below that this was a superconductor. The discussion of why a room temperature superconductor would be nice to have is still relevant.

We have a new superconductor…according to the scientists who believe they created it. Or not…compared to other scientists who haven’t been able to fully replicate it yet. Why are superconductors important?

Superconductors that can operate at room temperature and ambient pressure hold promise for quantum computing, a more efficient energy grid, producing energy from fusion and more innovation… Superconducting materials can conduct electricity without losing energy in the form of heat, which happens as electrons move through a material and interact with atoms.

Axios

This seems to me like something computers/robots could work on. Simulate a jagillion materials to see which could be room-temperature superconductors. Then synthesize the most promising ones, test them, determine the most promising of the most promising, tweak them randomly in a gajillion permutations, simulate them again, synthesize them again, test them again, and so on. You could introduce a little bit of random-ness into the process to avoid going down a path-dependent rabbit hole that ends in a dead end (sorry, way too many metaphors there).