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This is a great story that highlights how human beings working together can reveal new insights. I love how the author covers each individual's contribution to

This is a great story that highlights how human beings working together can reveal new insights. I love how the author covers each individual's contribution to the discovery. It's also interesting to see how critical the human element of this story is, and how incidental the "AI" piece is. A computer system employed statistics to exploit (but not comprehend) a pattern in a high-dimensional dataset. This led researchers to examine the relevant dimensions using traditional data visualization tools. Once the nature of the pattern was characterized, other mathematicians were able to use their insight to find deep connections to other areas. These interconnections are now blossoming.

bbor 3y ago
The title is obviously clickbait, but the idea a good one I hope some of the scientists here take away from this: “using AI” is about identifying things it can do that you could never hope to, usually for reasons of scale or complexity. LLM-based systems will revolutionize the day-to-day of science IMO, but that doesn’t mean that they’re replacing human reasoning faculties.
naasking 3y ago
> A computer system employed statistics to exploit (but not comprehend) a pattern in a high-dimensional dataset. Nitpick: I don't like this phrasing because there are degrees of comprehension, and understanding that two or more things are correlated in specific ways is a form of comprehension. "Exploit but not explain" is a better phrasing IMO.