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Discovery Loop

discoveryloop.com

121–130 of 625 posts

Re: Discovery Loop

#121
post #56

The site itself is really leaning into the “made with Fable” aesthetic

If their goal is to automate scientific discovery, why would they not automate building their website?

(Though, I do wish people would use just a few extra prompts to break out of the 'vibe-coded' look.)

Re: Discovery Loop

#122

From Jeff's twitter post: > Our general approach is to automate the experimental loop. We think this approach is broadly applicable across many different fields of science and engineering. We’ll initially focus on ML research and engineering, but believe the approach can help with important subproblems in nearly every one of the fourteen NAE Grand Challenge problems. We think doing this well requires strong expertise…

Would be great if they'd add:

Reverse human aging.

(Maybe a sub-topic under "Engineer Better Medicines".)

Re: Discovery Loop

#123

How do you automate experimentation? Doubtlessly, AI can iterate at superhuman speeds in the domains of thought and design: Software, mathematical proofs, literature search. But in the realm of experiment? Alas it is the lack of a body that constrains it. Rather than transcendence what AI requires is immanence. In the human flesh may we find the godhead living among men. Let the laboratories, warehouses, and factorie…

> transcendence > immanence somebody has been studying Christian theology!

[dead]

Re: Discovery Loop

#124

From Jeff's twitter post: > Our general approach is to automate the experimental loop. We think this approach is broadly applicable across many different fields of science and engineering. We’ll initially focus on ML research and engineering, but believe the approach can help with important subproblems in nearly every one of the fourteen NAE Grand Challenge problems. We think doing this well requires strong expertise…

Which engineering discipline touches most of these?

Re: Discovery Loop

#125

How do you automate experimentation? Doubtlessly, AI can iterate at superhuman speeds in the domains of thought and design: Software, mathematical proofs, literature search. But in the realm of experiment? Alas it is the lack of a body that constrains it. Rather than transcendence what AI requires is immanence. In the human flesh may we find the godhead living among men. Let the laboratories, warehouses, and factorie…

> transcendence > immanence somebody has been studying Christian theology!

Beauty of human writing.

Re: Discovery Loop

#126
Discovery and optimization are very different processes. Optimization is the process of finding the shortest path to a goal. Discovery is the process of stumbling on new goals and redrawing the map of what's possible.

Ambitious goals and new discoveries happen via novelty-based search. Progress in scientific discovery is measured by how different/interesting the outcomes are, not by closeness to a predetermined goal.

Discovery is a creative search that preserves optionality, whereas optimization restricts optionality. In other words, you usually don't discover anything novel unless you're trying new things that don't appear connected to the goal in the first place. Would an ML optimization loop have discovered transformers?

Re: Discovery Loop

#128

From Jeff's twitter post: > Our general approach is to automate the experimental loop. We think this approach is broadly applicable across many different fields of science and engineering. We’ll initially focus on ML research and engineering, but believe the approach can help with important subproblems in nearly every one of the fourteen NAE Grand Challenge problems. We think doing this well requires strong expertise…

Why is "12. Enhance Virtual Reality" in there? T_T

Re: Discovery Loop

#129

Note that Jeff and crew have cleverly structured their company to avoid problematic uses of AI (e.g., weapons or tracking humans). I suspect that many top researchers will want to work there for this reason, and to work with other top researchers who have a history of delivering results.

There's this somewhere on that page:

> securing cyberspace,

which has clear military implications, at least in today's age.

Re: Discovery Loop

#130

From Jeff's twitter post: > Our general approach is to automate the experimental loop. We think this approach is broadly applicable across many different fields of science and engineering. We’ll initially focus on ML research and engineering, but believe the approach can help with important subproblems in nearly every one of the fourteen NAE Grand Challenge problems. We think doing this well requires strong expertise…

The solution to most of these problems lies in policy, not in new tech advancements.

Maybe if our biggest companies did something other than suck up to science denying wackos, some progress could be made in these areas.

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