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I’ve always felt that the idea that science is bottlenecked and therefore needs more automation only works for a very narrow definition of what science is, and
by stephantul 2mo ago
I’ve always felt that the idea that science is bottlenecked and therefore needs more automation only works for a very narrow definition of what science is, and entails a very specific view on what it should be.
- tcp_handshaker 2mo agoLets keep your comment out of the VC pitch deck shall we?
- hobofan 2mo ago> only works for a very narrow definition of what science is And so does academia. It's just that instead of AI and robotics, PhD students are thrown onto problems that are in large parts slightly tweaked reconfigurations of similar experiments. Especially in chemistry, biochemistry, material sciences there is a large space of discoveries that are barely "novel" in an intellectually stimulating way, but still highly valuable that can be explored orders of magnitudes faster than is currently the case.
- porridgeraisin 2mo agoYep. A communications professor where I did my MS says a 200usd/mo claude sub (which ant gives for free) does as much work as 5 grad students. It's mostly like you said, trying out new ideas rapidly.
- teamonkey 2mo agoThe purpose of hiring grad students isn’t to advance science, it’s to train experts.
- pickleRick243 2mo agoIt's 90% to advance science via cheap labor and 10% to train a small group of future experts who will hire grad students to 90% advance science via cheap labor etc. ...
- porridgeraisin 2mo agoYes. They have grad students too. This is just like having more grad students that don't need to be trained so the work you can get done is not bottlenecked by the number of people you can train.
- scottyah 2mo agoPerhaps this is the fundamental problem that can be solved with AI. As a non-scientist, I'd very much prefer to have massive amounts of scientific breakthroughs instead of massive amounts of well-trained experts.
- teamonkey 2mo agoThis is a misunderstanding of how scientific research works, why it is done and how it is done. Reducing the number of people who can do science will not pay off in the long run.
- scottyah 2mo agoScientific research has been getting a bit too Pharisees-like in the last two decades, and it's causing a lot of people to drop out and join industry. I think enabling people to make discoveries on their own without the grad school hazing will yield MORE people who can do science, not less.
- stephantul 2mo agoThat is true, I’ve seen people do biochemistry and geology work, and it did look very mind-numbing. Then again, gassing rats and taking biopsies is not something you can do with AI.
- roughly 2mo ago> Then again, gassing rats and taking biopsies is not something you can do with AI. Also, like, let’s maybe _not_ make the “gassing and cutting living organisms open” AI? Let’s just leave that particular genie in its bottle?
- smcg 2mo agoUnfortunately, that's most of science. I don't see these AI systems doing reproducible experiments in "meatspace" any time soon.
- fragmede 2mo agoIf humanoid robots have the dexterity to tie a trash bag, as shown in Gemini 2's most recent robot demo, it doesn't seem all that far away. What's "any time soon" to you in hard numbers? 5 years? 10 years? 20?
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