So, if AI trained on AI generated data tend to perform worse, and you're trying to have AI generate the data that ultimately props up our civilization...
Clearly this can only end well
The AI Scientist: Towards Automated Open-Ended Scientific Discovery
71–80 of 144 posts
Re: The AI Scientist: Towards Automated Open-Ended Scientific Discovery
#72As someone 'in academia', I worry that tools like this fundamentally discard significant fractions of both the scientific process and why the process is structured that way. The reason that we do research is not simply so that we can produce papers and hence amass knowledge in an abstract sense. A huge part of the academic world is training and building up hands-on institutional knowledge within the population so tha…
LLM have unleashed the dreamer in each and every young coder. Now, there is all sorts of speculation on what these machines can or cannot do. This is a natural process of any mania.
These folks must all do courses in epistemology to realize that all knowledge is built up of symbolic components and not spit out by a probabilistic machine.
Gradually, reality will sync (intentional misspelling) in, and such imaginations will be seen to be futile manic episodes.
Re: The AI Scientist: Towards Automated Open-Ended Scientific Discovery
#73> The AI Scientist is designed to be compute efficient. Each idea is implemented and developed into a full paper at a cost of approximately $15 per paper. While there are still occasional flaws in the papers produced by this first version (discussed below and in the report), this cost and the promise the system shows so far illustrate the potential of The AI Scientist to democratize research and significantly acceler…
TFA aside, if we could make scientific research produce new insights with low latency and almost-zero costs, it would definitely not make science worthless.
It would be a fantastic day for science.
Not everything is worth (production costs + margin). Many things have intrinsic worth and are worth more to society if you drive down their cost of production.
Re: The AI Scientist: Towards Automated Open-Ended Scientific Discovery
#74So, if AI trained on AI generated data tend to perform worse, and you're trying to have AI generate the data that ultimately props up our civilization... Clearly this can only end well
> AI trained on AI generated data tend to perform worse
Citation needed.
To the best of my knowledge, synthetic data is a solid way to train models and isn't going away anytime soon.
Re: The AI Scientist: Towards Automated Open-Ended Scientific Discovery
#75> The AI Scientist is designed to be compute efficient. Each idea is implemented and developed into a full paper at a cost of approximately $15 per paper. While there are still occasional flaws in the papers produced by this first version (discussed below and in the report), this cost and the promise the system shows so far illustrate the potential of The AI Scientist to democratize research and significantly acceler…
TFA aside, if we could make scientific research produce new insights with low latency and almost-zero costs, it would definitely not make science worthless. It would be a fantastic day for science. Not everything is worth (production costs + margin). Many things have intrinsic worth and are worth more to society if you drive down their cost of production.
That sounds like an extremely dangerous day for science as well. If anyone could pop up an ML tool and task it with inventing and validating something truly novel, that would be weaponized extremely fast (likely right after people use it for porn, the frontier for all new tech).
I do totally agree on the cost + margins point you make. I've never actually been a fan of valuing things in that way, and in my pipe dream utopia we wouldn't need or use money at all. I didn't clarify enough there, but I actually mean worthless in the non-monetary sense as well. Any invention created through such an ML tool would be one of a countless pile of stuff created. How important can any one really be?
Re: The AI Scientist: Towards Automated Open-Ended Scientific Discovery
#76As someone 'in academia', I worry that tools like this fundamentally discard significant fractions of both the scientific process and why the process is structured that way. The reason that we do research is not simply so that we can produce papers and hence amass knowledge in an abstract sense. A huge part of the academic world is training and building up hands-on institutional knowledge within the population so tha…
LLM have unleashed the dreamer in each and every young coder. Now, there is all sorts of speculation on what these machines can or cannot do. This is a natural process of any mania. These folks must all do courses in epistemology to realize that all knowledge is built up of symbolic components and not spit out by a probabilistic machine. Gradually, reality will sync (intentional misspelling) in, and such imaginations…
my guy you're so confident yet you forget AlphaFold, it designs protein structures that don't exist.
Who's to say that a model can't eventually be trained to work within certain parameters the real word operates in and make new novel ideas and inventions much like a human does in a larger scope.
Re: The AI Scientist: Towards Automated Open-Ended Scientific Discovery
#77As someone who truly loves science, the idea of automating the creative parts strikes me at the core as a horrible mistake. Yes, even before AI, we've already tried some automations -- actually some of those I even believe is a bad thing, such as the internet. Most people would disagree no doubt, but I feel like automating science, especially with regard to the more "creative parts" makes it more like an industry, ri…
I think this is looking at it wrong. If AI can do boring science it frees us up to do imaginative and fun science without the constraints of capitalism. You don’t have to worry about your science being valuable enough
Re: The AI Scientist: Towards Automated Open-Ended Scientific Discovery
#78So, if AI trained on AI generated data tend to perform worse, and you're trying to have AI generate the data that ultimately props up our civilization... Clearly this can only end well
> AI trained on AI generated data tend to perform worse Citation needed. To the best of my knowledge, synthetic data is a solid way to train models and isn't going away anytime soon.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07566-y
IIRC it had a pretty big thread here a few weeks ago
Re: The AI Scientist: Towards Automated Open-Ended Scientific Discovery
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
LLM have unleashed the dreamer in each and every young coder. Now, there is all sorts of speculation on what these machines can or cannot do. This is a natural process of any mania. These folks must all do courses in epistemology to realize that all knowledge is built up of symbolic components and not spit out by a probabilistic machine. Gradually, reality will sync (intentional misspelling) in, and such imaginations…
my guy you're so confident yet you forget AlphaFold, it designs protein structures that don't exist. Who's to say that a model can't eventually be trained to work within certain parameters the real word operates in and make new novel ideas and inventions much like a human does in a larger scope.
Models like AlphaFold are very different beasts. There's definitely a place for tools that suggest verifiable, specific, products. Overarching models like 'The AI Scientist' that try to do 'end-to-end' science, especially when your end product is a paper, are significantly less useful.
Re: The AI Scientist: Towards Automated Open-Ended Scientific Discovery
#80As someone 'in academia', I worry that tools like this fundamentally discard significant fractions of both the scientific process and why the process is structured that way. The reason that we do research is not simply so that we can produce papers and hence amass knowledge in an abstract sense. A huge part of the academic world is training and building up hands-on institutional knowledge within the population so tha…
> If I can just tab complete my N body code, did I really gain the knowledge of building it?
Yes, because fixing it requires about the same effort as writing it from scratch. At least with current level of AI. When it works well, you just move it to a library and use it without worrying about implementation, like we do with all other library code.
Using AI doesn't make the problem any easier for the developer. The fact that it generates functions for you is misleading, code review and testing is harder than typing. In the end we use AI in coding because we like the experience, it doesn't fundamentally change what kind of code we can write. It saves us a few keystrokes and lookups.
AI might be useful in literature review stage, formal writing and formatting math. Who's gonna give millions worth of compute to blindly run the AI-Scientist? Most companies prefer to have a human in the loop, it's a high stakes scenario depending on cost.