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Science needs experiments and those will not go faster because of AI. So why would fusion arrive any faster?

by quonn 2y ago

kevinventullo 2y ago
Yeah I did say “back half”. I just think that if we can build an AI that can logically reason better than any human, combined with the total knowledge of all humans, it can start running experiments and doing “science” itself.
- benreesman 2y ago
  In general I think I agree with all your points. The word “if” in both the parent and GP is doing a lot of lifting here though, if they can do amazing feat X, then they will likewise do amazing feat Y. And I think in every instance you’ve made a credible argument. But I don’t think we have the if yet. If I could just slip GPT-4 an executive summary of the code I meant to write and the emails I meant to send on a given day I would be doing it. But it can’t: it’s catastrophically wrong with extreme confidence routinely. These things are easy to cherry-pick in citation but still fuck up on HellaSwag in instances a child would not.
  - kevinventullo 2y ago
    Oh, I 100% agree we are not there. Every time a new model comes out I cook up a few undergrad math homework questions to see if they’ve gotten any better, and so far they haven’t. But, the thing I like about “reducing” AGI to solving math is that it kind of sidesteps these thorny questions about interacting with the real world to conduct experiments, etc. It’s something that, in principle, can be done with the current text interfaces, and it’s pretty easy to tell whether or not we’ve gotten there.
aleph_minus_one 2y ago
> Science needs experiments and those will not go faster because of AI. Even though I am deeply skeptical whether AIs (as they are commonly understood today) will be helpful for hard scientific problems (for quite different reasons), I don't think this argument necessarily holds: couldn't a (hypothetical!) AI propose much better experiments and experimental designs?
- quonn 2y ago
  That‘s not how science has progressed in the past. It has not progressed by giant leaps of superior intelligence but incrementally and hardly a genius was more than 10 years ahead of his time.

Science needs experiments and those will not go faster because of AI. So why would fusion arrive any faster?

by quonn 2y ago

Science needs experiments and those will not go faster because of AI. So why would fusion arrive any faster?

Yeah I did say “back half”. I just think that if we can build an AI that can logically reason better than any human, combined with the total knowledge of all humans, it can start running experiments and doing “science” itself.

benreesman 2y ago
In general I think I agree with all your points. The word “if” in both the parent and GP is doing a lot of lifting here though, if they can do amazing feat X, then they will likewise do amazing feat Y. And I think in every instance you’ve made a credible argument. But I don’t think we have the if yet. If I could just slip GPT-4 an executive summary of the code I meant to write and the emails I meant to send on a given day I would be doing it. But it can’t: it’s catastrophically wrong with extreme confidence routinely. These things are easy to cherry-pick in citation but still fuck up on HellaSwag in instances a child would not.
- kevinventullo 2y ago
  Oh, I 100% agree we are not there. Every time a new model comes out I cook up a few undergrad math homework questions to see if they’ve gotten any better, and so far they haven’t. But, the thing I like about “reducing” AGI to solving math is that it kind of sidesteps these thorny questions about interacting with the real world to conduct experiments, etc. It’s something that, in principle, can be done with the current text interfaces, and it’s pretty easy to tell whether or not we’ve gotten there.

aleph_minus_one 2y ago

> Science needs experiments and those will not go faster because of AI. Even though I am deeply skeptical whether AIs (as they are commonly understood today) will be helpful for hard scientific problems (for quite different reasons), I don't think this argument necessarily holds: couldn't a (hypothetical!) AI propose much better experiments and experimental designs?

quonn 2y ago
That‘s not how science has progressed in the past. It has not progressed by giant leaps of superior intelligence but incrementally and hardly a genius was more than 10 years ahead of his time.