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Sometimes science isn’t doing completely novel things, but combining ideas across different disciplines or areas. AI has some potential here, because unlike a

Sometimes 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 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. 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 ago
  I 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 ago
      I 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 ago
        That’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.
        suzzer99 2y ago
        I wasn't a customer. I wrote a book and tried to publish it on KDP, Amazon's digital publishing wing. A bot hallucinated that my eBook was plagiarizing my paperback (well yeah, it's the same book) and suspended my account. All appeals were denied with increasingly vague language, either by more bots, or humans with strong incentive to just rubber stamp the bot's decision and move on. I'll never know which. It's all here in this pamphlet: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40992654 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40992654
- bmacho 2y ago
  > It doesn't even matter if what the AI generates is true or not, if it leads the human to truth. A weird statement. I think you only care about humans knowing the thing, right? Then it can be true that it doesn't matter if the machine is right or wrong. However, if the machine is right.. that will have consequences.
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.
- slashdev 2y ago
  True
- hackit2 2y ago
  That is because all of the leading "science" is being done by private pharmaceutical companies, and businesses that have strict NDA's and security.
math_dandy 2y ago
I 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 ago
  In 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 ago
    That'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

Borealid 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. 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 ago
I 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 ago
    I 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 ago
      That’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.
      - suzzer99 2y ago
        I wasn't a customer. I wrote a book and tried to publish it on KDP, Amazon's digital publishing wing. A bot hallucinated that my eBook was plagiarizing my paperback (well yeah, it's the same book) and suspended my account. All appeals were denied with increasingly vague language, either by more bots, or humans with strong incentive to just rubber stamp the bot's decision and move on. I'll never know which. It's all here in this pamphlet: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40992654 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40992654
bmacho 2y ago
> It doesn't even matter if what the AI generates is true or not, if it leads the human to truth. A weird statement. I think you only care about humans knowing the thing, right? Then it can be true that it doesn't matter if the machine is right or wrong. However, if the machine is right.. that will have consequences.

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.

slashdev 2y ago
True
hackit2 2y ago
That is because all of the leading "science" is being done by private pharmaceutical companies, and businesses that have strict NDA's and security.

math_dandy 2y ago

I 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 ago
In 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 ago
  That'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