6 ms·

ChatGPT spitballing fundamental physics theories

73 points by ramraj07 4y ago

0xmarcin 4y ago
Not sure about physics but I am really looking forward to see games with NPC characters powered by ChatGPT. That would make some game world really deep and involving.
- kfrzcode 4y ago
  Working on it.
- Karrot_Kream 4y ago
  Ask it to play a MUD with you. You may need to specify the system prompt. It works right now on GPT-3.5 just fine. Try it, I'm playing one currently.
- otabdeveloper4 4y ago
  ChatGPT lowers information complexity by smoothing and averaging the information content, so no, likely you'll see the opposite effect. We already went through this with Stable Diffusion - the content it produces looks very professional, but also somehow exactly the same no matter the subject.
  - 0xmarcin 4y ago
    This assumes that you will have only a single model. I expected at least one model per race (elves, dwarfs...) x adversity (friend, enemy, neutral) x some psychological models (e.g. Jung personality archetypes). So with ~100 GTP models learned on different sets you may have a quite diverse army of characters. ChatGPT also offers a possibility to e.g. have a real bargaining at the shops: "How much is that sword... ".
    - otabdeveloper4 4y ago
      You miss the overarching point. Neural network AI's work by averaging information and making it smoother, whereas it's the uneven "bumps" that actually make art interesting. (This is why most artists add deliberate imperfections to their work.)
- manuelmoreale 4y ago
  I’m not the only one who thought about this! I had this exact thought a couple of weeks ago. It would make open world games a lot more entertaining. Thank you for this comment, it really made me happy.
- lambo4bkfast 4y ago
  Starfield has been rumored to have this.
ramraj07 4y ago
I’m not a physicist myself but interested in it, and this was one of the topics I thought I’ll coax the bot into imagining. The theories might not be solid (I wouldn’t know myself), but I’m excited about the bots future as a companion for every day work in science. I’m a biologist by training and have already made significant progress on multiple difficult questions I’ve had trouble with for decades in the 2 days I’ve had gpt4. Can’t wait to see what all we could accomplish with it!
- ChaitanyaSai 4y ago
  "made significant progress on multiple difficult questions I’ve had trouble with for decades in the 2 days I’ve had gpt4" -- that is wildly impressive. Can you share some specific questions. Thanks!
  - ramraj07 4y ago
    I have had hypotheses regarding Epigenetic modulation of mutation rates playing a role in “epigenetically directed evolution;” this is not my primary field and honestly not a topic anyone has properly focused on. I’ve even corresponded with a couple of experts in related fields but didn’t make progress. Chatting with the bot I discovered scientists who might have actually generated some data on this topic a bit inadvertently that I never discovered merely by googling. I’ve made a list and am going through the literature already. I can’t imagine what else I can do with this tool if I can drag and drop pdfs for it to get more context on such arcane topics.
    - ChaitanyaSai 4y ago
      Interesting, thanks!. I see this as falling into the bucket of taking unstructured data/thoughts and mapping it well to structured/articulated data that is already out there. LLMs do excel at this and keep getting better fast (minus the hallucination, but that is easy to cross check). Would love to see examples of truly novel thesis generations that are verifiably plausible, which aren't a remix of what came earlier...
    - potamic 4y ago
l33tbro 4y ago
It's certainly handy for summarising the existing corpus that we are unfamiliar with (though take acuracy with a grain of salt). Proposing new theories I'd be extremely skeptical of. It's just not what this thing is made to do.
- ramraj07 4y ago
  It’s not gonna spew completely solid hypotheses but I can see how these ideas can be amazing seeds for us to pursue further. Importantly I asked it to think like Einstein. In exchanges I didn’t put here, it first just said Einstein would have worked on string theory if he were alive today. I reminded it that einsteins unique ability was to imaginatively think of completely new ideas. It then spewed these two topics. It’s like asking it to write songs in a particular poets style but for science. That sounds amazing to me. Importantly it clearly has some understanding of these theories. At least as much as any regular person would, in my opinion.
  - l33tbro 4y ago
    It's kind of weird. This technology is designed for the human to give the machine a prompt. What I like about your approach is that you're almost using it to create the inverse: the machine supplying a slightly fuzzy idea that could prompt you to take your research in new and unexpected directions.
nico 4y ago
Love it. A few days ago I did a similar exercise playing with alternative definitions of gravity. It was even able to provide (GlowScript 3.1!) code to run a simulation using the concepts we developed (and it worked). It’s amazing the feeling of going back and forth, iterating quickly on the ideas and then being able to generate code to test them.
- ramraj07 4y ago
  Was it with gpt3x or 4? In these exercises 4 is miles ahead now, I’ll highly recommend ponying the 20 bucks and playing with it to see for yourself!
  - nico 4y ago
    It was with gpt3. Already tried a couple of previous convos with gpt4 and noticed the difference. Will have to try the gravity one now. Thanks for the recommendation!
  - poglet 4y ago
    Are you referring to ChatGPT Plus?
    - lwansbrough 4y ago
      ChatGPT Plus is the platform, GPT4 is the model. (ChatGPT+ allows you to specify which model you want to use.)
  - BiteCode_dev 4y ago
    Can confirm. This week a physicist friend came by to give it a try. He asked some questions related to his domain. I was fully expecting GPT to bullshit its way through it, from experience with GPT 3. But to my surprise, and to his, it got quite decent answers.
- tokamak-teapot 4y ago
  Any chance of a peek at the demo code and/or transcript please? Sounds fun!
RandomLensman 4y ago
Is there a way to get it to babble less, i.e., use more compact and to the point language?
- szszrk 4y ago
  I used to simply ask it to make it brief, provide a summary or contain answer in N words and in my language it complied happily.
  - ramraj07 4y ago
    I have done that but it tends to actually omit some facts as well. This convo is after I asked it to stop adding disclaimers as you can see. I take it as just a quirk of a colleague and don’t mind it at this point lol.
    - JProthero 4y ago
      > I asked it to stop adding disclaimers as you can see. This is the first example of an extended dialogue with GPT-4 that I have read, and the fact that it failed to obey the request to dispense with its repetitive disclaimers was perhaps the most interesting thing to me about it. It seems somehow more fluent to me than GPT-3, as though its verbal IQ has increased a few points, but GPT-3 was already quite articulate; I havent yet seen any examples of clear new abilities from GPT-4. The substance of the dialogue struck me as generic and lacking novel insight, though the bar was of course set rather high (essentially 'Describe revolutionary new physics'). I've also been jaded by the past few years of advances in AI; if I had seen this transcript ten years ago I would have been surprised and impressed that an AI could have a conversation about theoretical physics, and could demonstrate an ability to discuss relevant concepts in a reasonable and confident manner. The ability of large language models to exhibit sophisticated verbal reasoning, albeit not yet reliably so, is their most striking feature to me, and I do think that has great scientific potential; perhaps GPT-4 isn't yet a major advance in that respect, but I imagine an important foundation has been laid. I should say I'm grateful to you for publishing this Ramraj; the transcript and the impressions you and others have shared in this thread have been illuminating. Anyone who is curious about the application of AI to theoretical physics may be interested in the work of the MIT physicist Max Tegmark and his group, which is still at an early stage. Here are some videos in which he discusses AI and physics, in increasing order of detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dinfiuGqoQw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dinfiuGqoQw (6 minute clip from a conversation with Lex Fridman) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9atnfAHBfSI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9atnfAHBfSI (20 minute presentation) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkJkHB_c3nA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkJkHB_c3nA (49 minute presentation)
Jack000 4y ago
The first theory reminds me of Sarumpaet rules from Schild’s Ladder.
marviel 4y ago
very cool.
supermatt 4y ago
I have been using ChatGPT as a Lithuanian language tutor. It is surprisingly amazing - accurately (verified with a native speaker) conversing in Lithuanian with phrase level translations, explaining pronunciation, explaining clauses and cases, and is able to explain some grammatical concepts (usage of commas, etc) that I haven't found explained in English elsewhere.
- ChatGTP 4y ago
  I asked it to translate my resume recently, saw the word Python and or Linux stopped translating and stared opening a fake terminal and doing weird stuff, so YMMV. My honest opinion is that very few people are clear on what the thing is actual good at, great at or bad at at this stage. We're still trying to find it's real use case. IMO it's best for things you already know quite a bit about so at least you don't mess up hard. In other words, it seems like a more advanced ELIZA. Nearly everyone who has had a good time with it has used talk to it until they had a break through.
- euroderf 4y ago
  Works for Interlingua too. A conlang with no native speakers (AFAIK). A great use of its capabilities.
arpowers 4y ago
I did this myself a few weeks ago, while I don’t want to sound crazy… I managed to get GPT to mathematically derive a formula and calculate actual results to explain some well known anomalies in physics. I’m aware that gpt might be imagining and contriving false conclusions … but I have no doubt that ai will be moving physics forward within the decade
- ShamelessC 4y ago
  > while I don’t want to sound crazy… Doesn't the author do something similar in the article? Why are you worried people will think you are crazy?
- _nalply 4y ago
  Perhaps. Generative AI needs a way to receive feedback. AI learned to play chess by playing a lot, and the feedback was either winning, losing, or drawing. If generative AI can repeatedly test physics theories faster than humans, then we may witness progress in physics. AI could generate thousands of theories and conduct experiments successfully, possibly leading to new physics models. However, I am uncertain whether this will be achievable soon, particularly for theories requiring costly experiments. A benefit could be that humans crave recognition for success, making papers less valuable. AI may be more willing to take risks and document its failures than humans.
  - JProthero 4y ago
    >If generative AI can repeatedly test physics theories faster than humans, then we may witness progress in physics. AI could generate thousands of theories and conduct experiments successfully, possibly leading to new physics models. However, I am uncertain whether this will be achievable soon, particularly for theories requiring costly experiments. I've long felt that this may be the strongest argument against an AI singularity. The technical ability to emulate the minds of the world's theoretical physicists and run accelerated simulations of their thought processes may be developed, but the generation of valid new insights in physics might depend strongly on observations and experiments conducted in the physical world, as seems to have been the case historically, and the virtual equivalents of those experiments may prove to be inadequate or impractical to implement. Steven Pinker made a similar argument in this 2018 discussion with Sam Harris (the remarks begin at 65m03s in this recording [1]; the full conext begins at around 50m36s [2]). Harris is concerned about existential risks posed by advances in artificial intelligence, whereas Pinker is less so, in part for this reason. I agree with Harris that there are risks associated with artificial general intelligence, but I agree with Pinker and the parent comment about the dependence of the scientific process on experiment, and that an inability to conduct accelerated experiments in the physical world may undermine the standard argument about the inevitability of an AI singularity. An AI capable of interfacing with the physical world might develop the ability to conduct accelerated physical experiments, but it would presumably face the same fundamental and contingent limits as human researchers, and the history of human science suggests those limits may impede exponential progress. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hofkL0RJJtM&t=3903s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hofkL0RJJtM&t=3903s [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hofkL0RJJtM&t=3036s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hofkL0RJJtM&t=3036s
tom-from-july 4y ago
I love this so much. Like, most of the concepts and ideas it refers to are not completely new ideas (don’t ask me were I heard about them), but it’s interesting to hear them not proposed as a solution to a specific problem, but just based on the fact that they are thematically close to the works of an existing scientist. A little creepy though, like research from beyond the grave (move rights pending). Non the less interesting though. I am currently researching into physics-informed neural networks for quantum problems, which are guided with differential equations. Maybe if you’d extend an LLM with an execution engine/numerical model, it’d be able to actually produce differential equations to undermine its hallucinated theories. From my short testing that is something ChatGPT (4) is not that good at. Or it’s just a generally a hard problem to produce novel differential equations
peignoir 4y ago
Funny I asked it questions about general relativity as Einstein too :)
raydiatian 4y ago
I don’t know how much people listen to Sabine Hossenfelder’s opinions on things, but the article mentioned the age old desire for unification and symmetry, and frankly, I have to point out how aestheticist, unscientific, biased, and frankly typical it is for an LLM trained on modern (theoretical physics) conversations to go in search of unification. I know AI isn’t doing new science any time soon (or even this decade) but what I do think is that it’s probably dumb to bias your AI to go hunting for grand unified theories when what it should be looking for is unanswered questions grounded in first principles and proposing candidate experiments to discover the shape of data behind those doors, AND ONLY THEN proposing theories. The modern mechanics revolutions of the 20th century demonstrated that our intuitions were completely mismatched for what the truth was. Planck himself rejected the notion of curve fitting which ultimately birthed energy quanta. It’s OUR macro universe that is the weird one, a strange corner case of quantum reality in the absurdly large.
whatshisface 4y ago
This is really awful, the text is completely content-free but it's got everyone who's not a domain expert hooked. I didn't know whether ChatGPT's ability to babble convincingly was going to cause trouble or be a funny quirk that we all knew about and worked around, but this thread is really making it look like the pessimists were right about it. The problem is that it gets past many people's filters because its phrasing sends a lot of intelligent/rational/professional signals, as it was engineered to do. Nobody is used to picking smart-sounding text apart word by word to make sure they agree with it, except maybe academics, and that's the vulnerability it reaches us through. I also think that OpenAI got human nature backwards when they trained it to hedge on everything it said - everybody knows that people who constantly demure are the most reliable! A safe chatbot would sound pushy, like a bad salesman or an ideological agent; like something incapable of self-questioning.
- yieldcrv 4y ago
  Lots of cults and belief systems operate this way Like that time a science fiction writer started his own religion based on characters from his novel and got a bunch of celebrities financially tied to it Or when holistic practitioners procedurally generate an unsubstantiated preventative cure Might as well just turn your brain off now, you won’t need it Raised by Wolves moment
- renewiltord 4y ago
  Haha that's for now. But humans do this too, attempting to copy the shell around a concept: the way it is expressed. In American English, this is frequently authority speech mimicking law enforcement, scientists, or lawyers. All while lacking any knowledge of anything but the outer dressings of something. In this way, the problem is that the AI is just mimicking most of us on most things.
- dr_dshiv 4y ago
  > the text is completely content-free Since the same could be said about your comment, perhaps you could amend your critique?
  - 4y ago
mola 4y ago
I spent 20minutes being gaslighted by it trying to convince me some very obvious false logical statement in set theory is true. It wouldn't for a second admit any doubts and would just say it's sorry I'm confused and that it'll explain it again more simply. This thing is not good for developing any useful theories other than a creative crutch.
- yread 4y ago
  It presented me with some weird facts and when I asked for a reference it hallucinated one from 1988. The article name returned 0 results on Google. I went to the journal, volume, issue and page and found out it was in the middle of another article. When I asked GPT what is on that page in that vol. and issue it replied with the article's title again! When asked what is 3 pages earlier (where the actual article starts) it apologized and said it doesn't actually know...
nomercy400 4y ago
I know some physics, but not enough in this area to judge if the results here are accurate. With the inaccuracy of AI chatbots, this makes this tool not useful for me for learning new concepts, as they might be blatantly wrong.
- zoover2020 4y ago
  Not only not useful, I'd go as far as extremely dangerous as most people _not_ in niche fields can't distinguish facts from fiction
elashri 4y ago
I tried GPT-4 after the launch by a couple of hours and it tried so hard to sell me the idea that terms on the two sides of an equation can be of different dimensions.
danbmil99 4y ago
This is actually a much better version of the techno-babble we see all the time in movies and TV. I assume they get it wrong because the story is more important, and tech ppl don't want to be associated with the bs that comes out of the actor's mouths. A great gig for GPT -- Hollywood bullshitter!
ofrzeta 4y ago
So, like Postmodernism text generator but with physics? https://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/ https://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism_Generator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism_Generator

73 points by ramraj07 4y ago

Not sure about physics but I am really looking forward to see games with NPC characters powered by ChatGPT. That would make some game world really deep and involving.

kfrzcode 4y ago
Working on it.
Karrot_Kream 4y ago
Ask it to play a MUD with you. You may need to specify the system prompt. It works right now on GPT-3.5 just fine. Try it, I'm playing one currently.
otabdeveloper4 4y ago
ChatGPT lowers information complexity by smoothing and averaging the information content, so no, likely you'll see the opposite effect. We already went through this with Stable Diffusion - the content it produces looks very professional, but also somehow exactly the same no matter the subject.
- 0xmarcin 4y ago
  This assumes that you will have only a single model. I expected at least one model per race (elves, dwarfs...) x adversity (friend, enemy, neutral) x some psychological models (e.g. Jung personality archetypes). So with ~100 GTP models learned on different sets you may have a quite diverse army of characters. ChatGPT also offers a possibility to e.g. have a real bargaining at the shops: "How much is that sword... ".
  - otabdeveloper4 4y ago
    You miss the overarching point. Neural network AI's work by averaging information and making it smoother, whereas it's the uneven "bumps" that actually make art interesting. (This is why most artists add deliberate imperfections to their work.)
manuelmoreale 4y ago
I’m not the only one who thought about this! I had this exact thought a couple of weeks ago. It would make open world games a lot more entertaining. Thank you for this comment, it really made me happy.
lambo4bkfast 4y ago
Starfield has been rumored to have this.

ramraj07 4y ago

I’m not a physicist myself but interested in it, and this was one of the topics I thought I’ll coax the bot into imagining. The theories might not be solid (I wouldn’t know myself), but I’m excited about the bots future as a companion for every day work in science. I’m a biologist by training and have already made significant progress on multiple difficult questions I’ve had trouble with for decades in the 2 days I’ve had gpt4. Can’t wait to see what all we could accomplish with it!

ChaitanyaSai 4y ago
"made significant progress on multiple difficult questions I’ve had trouble with for decades in the 2 days I’ve had gpt4" -- that is wildly impressive. Can you share some specific questions. Thanks!
- ramraj07 4y ago
  I have had hypotheses regarding Epigenetic modulation of mutation rates playing a role in “epigenetically directed evolution;” this is not my primary field and honestly not a topic anyone has properly focused on. I’ve even corresponded with a couple of experts in related fields but didn’t make progress. Chatting with the bot I discovered scientists who might have actually generated some data on this topic a bit inadvertently that I never discovered merely by googling. I’ve made a list and am going through the literature already. I can’t imagine what else I can do with this tool if I can drag and drop pdfs for it to get more context on such arcane topics.
  - ChaitanyaSai 4y ago
    Interesting, thanks!. I see this as falling into the bucket of taking unstructured data/thoughts and mapping it well to structured/articulated data that is already out there. LLMs do excel at this and keep getting better fast (minus the hallucination, but that is easy to cross check). Would love to see examples of truly novel thesis generations that are verifiably plausible, which aren't a remix of what came earlier...
  - potamic 4y ago

l33tbro 4y ago

It's certainly handy for summarising the existing corpus that we are unfamiliar with (though take acuracy with a grain of salt). Proposing new theories I'd be extremely skeptical of. It's just not what this thing is made to do.

ramraj07 4y ago
It’s not gonna spew completely solid hypotheses but I can see how these ideas can be amazing seeds for us to pursue further. Importantly I asked it to think like Einstein. In exchanges I didn’t put here, it first just said Einstein would have worked on string theory if he were alive today. I reminded it that einsteins unique ability was to imaginatively think of completely new ideas. It then spewed these two topics. It’s like asking it to write songs in a particular poets style but for science. That sounds amazing to me. Importantly it clearly has some understanding of these theories. At least as much as any regular person would, in my opinion.
- l33tbro 4y ago
  It's kind of weird. This technology is designed for the human to give the machine a prompt. What I like about your approach is that you're almost using it to create the inverse: the machine supplying a slightly fuzzy idea that could prompt you to take your research in new and unexpected directions.

nico 4y ago

Love it. A few days ago I did a similar exercise playing with alternative definitions of gravity. It was even able to provide (GlowScript 3.1!) code to run a simulation using the concepts we developed (and it worked). It’s amazing the feeling of going back and forth, iterating quickly on the ideas and then being able to generate code to test them.

ramraj07 4y ago
Was it with gpt3x or 4? In these exercises 4 is miles ahead now, I’ll highly recommend ponying the 20 bucks and playing with it to see for yourself!
- nico 4y ago
  It was with gpt3. Already tried a couple of previous convos with gpt4 and noticed the difference. Will have to try the gravity one now. Thanks for the recommendation!
- poglet 4y ago
  Are you referring to ChatGPT Plus?
  - lwansbrough 4y ago
    ChatGPT Plus is the platform, GPT4 is the model. (ChatGPT+ allows you to specify which model you want to use.)
- BiteCode_dev 4y ago
  Can confirm. This week a physicist friend came by to give it a try. He asked some questions related to his domain. I was fully expecting GPT to bullshit its way through it, from experience with GPT 3. But to my surprise, and to his, it got quite decent answers.
tokamak-teapot 4y ago
Any chance of a peek at the demo code and/or transcript please? Sounds fun!

RandomLensman 4y ago

Is there a way to get it to babble less, i.e., use more compact and to the point language?

szszrk 4y ago
I used to simply ask it to make it brief, provide a summary or contain answer in N words and in my language it complied happily.
- ramraj07 4y ago
  I have done that but it tends to actually omit some facts as well. This convo is after I asked it to stop adding disclaimers as you can see. I take it as just a quirk of a colleague and don’t mind it at this point lol.
  - JProthero 4y ago
    > I asked it to stop adding disclaimers as you can see. This is the first example of an extended dialogue with GPT-4 that I have read, and the fact that it failed to obey the request to dispense with its repetitive disclaimers was perhaps the most interesting thing to me about it. It seems somehow more fluent to me than GPT-3, as though its verbal IQ has increased a few points, but GPT-3 was already quite articulate; I havent yet seen any examples of clear new abilities from GPT-4. The substance of the dialogue struck me as generic and lacking novel insight, though the bar was of course set rather high (essentially 'Describe revolutionary new physics'). I've also been jaded by the past few years of advances in AI; if I had seen this transcript ten years ago I would have been surprised and impressed that an AI could have a conversation about theoretical physics, and could demonstrate an ability to discuss relevant concepts in a reasonable and confident manner. The ability of large language models to exhibit sophisticated verbal reasoning, albeit not yet reliably so, is their most striking feature to me, and I do think that has great scientific potential; perhaps GPT-4 isn't yet a major advance in that respect, but I imagine an important foundation has been laid. I should say I'm grateful to you for publishing this Ramraj; the transcript and the impressions you and others have shared in this thread have been illuminating. Anyone who is curious about the application of AI to theoretical physics may be interested in the work of the MIT physicist Max Tegmark and his group, which is still at an early stage. Here are some videos in which he discusses AI and physics, in increasing order of detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dinfiuGqoQw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dinfiuGqoQw (6 minute clip from a conversation with Lex Fridman) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9atnfAHBfSI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9atnfAHBfSI (20 minute presentation) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkJkHB_c3nA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkJkHB_c3nA (49 minute presentation)

Jack000 4y ago

The first theory reminds me of Sarumpaet rules from Schild’s Ladder.

marviel 4y ago

very cool.

supermatt 4y ago

I have been using ChatGPT as a Lithuanian language tutor. It is surprisingly amazing - accurately (verified with a native speaker) conversing in Lithuanian with phrase level translations, explaining pronunciation, explaining clauses and cases, and is able to explain some grammatical concepts (usage of commas, etc) that I haven't found explained in English elsewhere.

ChatGTP 4y ago
I asked it to translate my resume recently, saw the word Python and or Linux stopped translating and stared opening a fake terminal and doing weird stuff, so YMMV. My honest opinion is that very few people are clear on what the thing is actual good at, great at or bad at at this stage. We're still trying to find it's real use case. IMO it's best for things you already know quite a bit about so at least you don't mess up hard. In other words, it seems like a more advanced ELIZA. Nearly everyone who has had a good time with it has used talk to it until they had a break through.
euroderf 4y ago
Works for Interlingua too. A conlang with no native speakers (AFAIK). A great use of its capabilities.

arpowers 4y ago

I did this myself a few weeks ago, while I don’t want to sound crazy… I managed to get GPT to mathematically derive a formula and calculate actual results to explain some well known anomalies in physics. I’m aware that gpt might be imagining and contriving false conclusions … but I have no doubt that ai will be moving physics forward within the decade

ShamelessC 4y ago
> while I don’t want to sound crazy… Doesn't the author do something similar in the article? Why are you worried people will think you are crazy?
_nalply 4y ago
Perhaps. Generative AI needs a way to receive feedback. AI learned to play chess by playing a lot, and the feedback was either winning, losing, or drawing. If generative AI can repeatedly test physics theories faster than humans, then we may witness progress in physics. AI could generate thousands of theories and conduct experiments successfully, possibly leading to new physics models. However, I am uncertain whether this will be achievable soon, particularly for theories requiring costly experiments. A benefit could be that humans crave recognition for success, making papers less valuable. AI may be more willing to take risks and document its failures than humans.
- JProthero 4y ago
  >If generative AI can repeatedly test physics theories faster than humans, then we may witness progress in physics. AI could generate thousands of theories and conduct experiments successfully, possibly leading to new physics models. However, I am uncertain whether this will be achievable soon, particularly for theories requiring costly experiments. I've long felt that this may be the strongest argument against an AI singularity. The technical ability to emulate the minds of the world's theoretical physicists and run accelerated simulations of their thought processes may be developed, but the generation of valid new insights in physics might depend strongly on observations and experiments conducted in the physical world, as seems to have been the case historically, and the virtual equivalents of those experiments may prove to be inadequate or impractical to implement. Steven Pinker made a similar argument in this 2018 discussion with Sam Harris (the remarks begin at 65m03s in this recording [1]; the full conext begins at around 50m36s [2]). Harris is concerned about existential risks posed by advances in artificial intelligence, whereas Pinker is less so, in part for this reason. I agree with Harris that there are risks associated with artificial general intelligence, but I agree with Pinker and the parent comment about the dependence of the scientific process on experiment, and that an inability to conduct accelerated experiments in the physical world may undermine the standard argument about the inevitability of an AI singularity. An AI capable of interfacing with the physical world might develop the ability to conduct accelerated physical experiments, but it would presumably face the same fundamental and contingent limits as human researchers, and the history of human science suggests those limits may impede exponential progress. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hofkL0RJJtM&t=3903s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hofkL0RJJtM&t=3903s [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hofkL0RJJtM&t=3036s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hofkL0RJJtM&t=3036s

tom-from-july 4y ago

I love this so much. Like, most of the concepts and ideas it refers to are not completely new ideas (don’t ask me were I heard about them), but it’s interesting to hear them not proposed as a solution to a specific problem, but just based on the fact that they are thematically close to the works of an existing scientist. A little creepy though, like research from beyond the grave (move rights pending). Non the less interesting though. I am currently researching into physics-informed neural networks for quantum problems, which are guided with differential equations. Maybe if you’d extend an LLM with an execution engine/numerical model, it’d be able to actually produce differential equations to undermine its hallucinated theories. From my short testing that is something ChatGPT (4) is not that good at. Or it’s just a generally a hard problem to produce novel differential equations

peignoir 4y ago

Funny I asked it questions about general relativity as Einstein too :)

raydiatian 4y ago

I don’t know how much people listen to Sabine Hossenfelder’s opinions on things, but the article mentioned the age old desire for unification and symmetry, and frankly, I have to point out how aestheticist, unscientific, biased, and frankly typical it is for an LLM trained on modern (theoretical physics) conversations to go in search of unification. I know AI isn’t doing new science any time soon (or even this decade) but what I do think is that it’s probably dumb to bias your AI to go hunting for grand unified theories when what it should be looking for is unanswered questions grounded in first principles and proposing candidate experiments to discover the shape of data behind those doors, AND ONLY THEN proposing theories. The modern mechanics revolutions of the 20th century demonstrated that our intuitions were completely mismatched for what the truth was. Planck himself rejected the notion of curve fitting which ultimately birthed energy quanta. It’s OUR macro universe that is the weird one, a strange corner case of quantum reality in the absurdly large.

whatshisface 4y ago

This is really awful, the text is completely content-free but it's got everyone who's not a domain expert hooked. I didn't know whether ChatGPT's ability to babble convincingly was going to cause trouble or be a funny quirk that we all knew about and worked around, but this thread is really making it look like the pessimists were right about it. The problem is that it gets past many people's filters because its phrasing sends a lot of intelligent/rational/professional signals, as it was engineered to do. Nobody is used to picking smart-sounding text apart word by word to make sure they agree with it, except maybe academics, and that's the vulnerability it reaches us through. I also think that OpenAI got human nature backwards when they trained it to hedge on everything it said - everybody knows that people who constantly demure are the most reliable! A safe chatbot would sound pushy, like a bad salesman or an ideological agent; like something incapable of self-questioning.

yieldcrv 4y ago
Lots of cults and belief systems operate this way Like that time a science fiction writer started his own religion based on characters from his novel and got a bunch of celebrities financially tied to it Or when holistic practitioners procedurally generate an unsubstantiated preventative cure Might as well just turn your brain off now, you won’t need it Raised by Wolves moment
renewiltord 4y ago
Haha that's for now. But humans do this too, attempting to copy the shell around a concept: the way it is expressed. In American English, this is frequently authority speech mimicking law enforcement, scientists, or lawyers. All while lacking any knowledge of anything but the outer dressings of something. In this way, the problem is that the AI is just mimicking most of us on most things.
dr_dshiv 4y ago
> the text is completely content-free Since the same could be said about your comment, perhaps you could amend your critique?
- 4y ago

mola 4y ago

I spent 20minutes being gaslighted by it trying to convince me some very obvious false logical statement in set theory is true. It wouldn't for a second admit any doubts and would just say it's sorry I'm confused and that it'll explain it again more simply. This thing is not good for developing any useful theories other than a creative crutch.

yread 4y ago
It presented me with some weird facts and when I asked for a reference it hallucinated one from 1988. The article name returned 0 results on Google. I went to the journal, volume, issue and page and found out it was in the middle of another article. When I asked GPT what is on that page in that vol. and issue it replied with the article's title again! When asked what is 3 pages earlier (where the actual article starts) it apologized and said it doesn't actually know...

nomercy400 4y ago

I know some physics, but not enough in this area to judge if the results here are accurate. With the inaccuracy of AI chatbots, this makes this tool not useful for me for learning new concepts, as they might be blatantly wrong.

zoover2020 4y ago
Not only not useful, I'd go as far as extremely dangerous as most people _not_ in niche fields can't distinguish facts from fiction

elashri 4y ago

I tried GPT-4 after the launch by a couple of hours and it tried so hard to sell me the idea that terms on the two sides of an equation can be of different dimensions.

danbmil99 4y ago

This is actually a much better version of the techno-babble we see all the time in movies and TV. I assume they get it wrong because the story is more important, and tech ppl don't want to be associated with the bs that comes out of the actor's mouths. A great gig for GPT -- Hollywood bullshitter!

ofrzeta 4y ago

So, like Postmodernism text generator but with physics? https://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/ https://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism_Generator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism_Generator