5 ms·
That's not exactly right. The answer was not explicitly given, according to the source: "However, the team did publish a paper in 2023 – which was fed to the s
by ipsum2 2y ago
That's not exactly right. The answer was not explicitly given, according to the source:
"However, the team did publish a paper in 2023 – which was fed to the system – about how this family of mobile genetic elements “steals bacteriophage tails to spread in nature”. At the time, the researchers thought the elements were limited to acquiring tails from phages infecting the same cell. Only later did they discover the elements can pick up tails floating around outside cells, too.
So one explanation for how the AI co-scientist came up with the right answer is that it missed the apparent limitation that stopped the humans getting it.
What is clear is that it was fed everything it needed to find the answer, rather than coming up with an entirely new idea. “Everything was already published, but in different bits,” says Penadés. “The system was able to put everything together.”"
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2469072-can-googles-new-research-assistant-ai-give-scientists-superpowers/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2469072-can-googles-new...
- letitgo12345 2y agoOr the humans did think of it and were actively proceeding to test that hypothesis
- slashdev 2y agoSometimes science isn’t doing completely novel things, but combining ideas across different disciplines or areas. AI has some potential here, because unlike a human, AI can be trained across all of it and has the opportunity to make connections a human, with more limited scope, might miss.
- Borealid 2y agoWhat matters isn't that an AI "make connections", it's that the AI generates some text that causes a human to make the connections. It doesn't even matter if what the AI generates is true or not, if it leads the human to truth. In this particular example it wasn't useful because the reader already knew the answer and was fishing for it with the LLM. But generally using an LLM as a creativity-inducer (a brainstorming tool) is fine, and IMO a better idea than trying to use them as an oracle.
- NoPicklez 2y agoI think in your case both things matter, if the AI gives you the answer and/or if the AI leads you to the answer yourself.
- suzzer99 2y ago> What matters isn't that an AI "make connections", it's that the AI generates some text that causes a human to make the connections. This has been true since Waze and Google maps first came out. Some of the suggestions were like "Huh, I never thought of going that way... hey this works... good job Waze!" and some were like "No Waze, I'm not going to try to cross eight lanes of free-flowing traffic at rush hour." What sucks is when an AI bot hallucinates some transgression and bans you from a monopoly marketplace for life, with no human recourse. Ask me how I know.
- s1gsegv 2y ago> What sucks is when an AI bot hallucinates some transgression and bans you from a monopoly marketplace for life, with no human recourse. Ask me how I know. This is fundamentally an incentive problem. Whether MegaCorp reaches this decision through an AI or a team of people who made a mistake, interpreted a rule differently than intended, missed context, whatever, they have been allowed to set up the system in a way which has all the incentives in their favor. They don’t need you and further, helping you costs them money. Yet we allow them to be the only game in town and still say it’s at their convenience to give you service. The focus in the modern world needs to be on re-incentivizing companies to do the right things, AI or otherwise.
- suzzer99 2y agoI think we need some kind of legislation that any kind of death penalty from a monopoly marketplace can't be carried out without a face-to-face appeal with a live human being.
- s1gsegv 2y agoThat’d certainly be a good step, but I think it still only incentives them to hear you out. Since in this case you would have demonstrated to them that you were a customer that risks costing them money (in the form of this appeal if nothing else) they’re still incentivized to not do business with you if given the option. Even in the case of something like a credit card company where it’s not technically a monopoly, you risk them all coming to the same conclusion. Essential for-profit service combined with at-will service is simply a recipe for failure.
- dmix 2y ago> Sometimes science isn’t doing completely novel things, but combining ideas across different disciplines or areas. That's basically 99% of startups/business too.
- math_dandy 2y agoI suspect your first sentence characterizes the vast majority of scientific activity.
- godelski 2y ago> to make connections a human, with more limited scope, might miss. I have a concern, that all this AI stuff is giving less time to "fuck around and find out" (i.e. experimentation). Just like how shifting from compiled languages leads to less time thinking about the code or reading docs while things are compiling. Sometimes you just need to walk away from the desk to solve a problem. It's kinda ironic, that reducing blocking aspects creates more. But the reason walking away from the desk works is because your creative part needs time to think and imagine. It's why you play with your lab equipment or make fun programs to learn. But if everything is focused on only going to the product then you end up straying away from that.
- jdiez17 2y agoIn my experience with AI for research and programming I find the opposite. It lets me get to the FAFO stage sooner, so I can try many possible paths (many of which may be dead ends).
- godelski 2y agoThat's not going to help if there's anything subtle. Yeah there's lots of failure in research but many things fail because subtle issues and AI is terrible at doing anything subtle. I do use AI myself but tbh I'm constantly fighting it and find it frequently misses small subtle things that are important. I even notice that people accept answers that I wouldn't, and that's sometimes concerning
- Mr_Bees69 2y ago>Sometimes Usually. The media portrays science in an unhelpful manner, gpt-3.5 didnt appear out of thin air, deekseek R1 was built on deepseek MOE was built on research by mistral
- guelo 2y agoI like to think of LLMs as amazing semantic search engines. Making these types of missed connections in vast lakes of existing data is not something humans are good at.
- d1sxeyes 2y agoThat’s absolutely not true, humans are very good at finding connections in huge datasets. LLMs also happen to be pretty good at it, but unlike humans they don’t get bored or tired from doing it too much.
- strangescript 2y agoThat is what 90% of science is really. There aren't a lot of truly "aha" moments where someone discovers something fundamental with little outside influence.
- xbmcuser 2y agoThis is what I think AI as it gets better will be great at and result in some great discoveries. Today we have millions of research papers on millions of topics the amount of knowledge is impossible for any one human or a group of humans to know so requires serendipity for some discoveries.
- Mr_Bees69 2y agoA person suffering hallucinations are the only true creatives, the rest is inadvertent or intentional synthesis.
- dartos 2y agoEvery day it becomes clearer and clearer that LLMs are, mainly, a huge step forward in search algorithms.