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Discovery Loop

discoveryloop.com

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Re: Discovery Loop

#211

Post by jedberg »

paganel wrote: post #129
tmoertel wrote: post #120

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.

So does more efficient cooking methods, but that is not the primary focus.

As opposed to say weapons systems or targeting systems, which are really only for military use.

The military needs a lot of things that other people need, and some things that only the military needs. If you don't work on the things only the military needs, I think you're in the clear.

Re: Discovery Loop

#212

Post by glenstein »

darth_avocado wrote: post #161
cjbarber wrote: post #18

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…

> Make Solar Energy Economical Isn’t it already?

Definitely pretty far along imo. But maybe they consider the progress bar to be at 75% or 80% rather than 100%.

Re: Discovery Loop

#213

Post by frollogaston »

darth_avocado wrote: post #161
cjbarber wrote: post #18

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…

> Make Solar Energy Economical Isn’t it already?

People on HN keep saying it is, but I'm still not seeing it. Companies are building datacenters in vast, sun-blasted deserts and still choosing to power those with natural gas. This in turn makes people complain about emissions pledges being reversed, but if it were economical, no pledge would be needed.

Of course, USA has cheaper oil/gas than other countries. But if you look elsewhere, rich countries are subsidizing solar, poor ones are basically not using it.

Re: Discovery Loop

#215

Post by porridgeraisin »

teamonkey wrote: post #159
porridgeraisin wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. 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.

The purpose of hiring grad students isn’t to advance science, it’s to train experts.

Yes. 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.

Re: Discovery Loop

#216

Post by cheschire »

dbgrman wrote: post #128
cjbarber wrote: post #18

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

When one of them dies, they want to leave behind a puzzle so complex that entire groups of the population dedicate their lives to solving it within the virtual world. They look old enough to have a lot of favorite 1980’s and 90’s pop culture references, so those will probably be the clues.

Re: Discovery Loop

#217

Post by embedding-shape »

dbgrman wrote: post #128
cjbarber wrote: post #18

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

I'm guessing this might be about "teleoperation" (like remote surgery via robots + VR) and being able to remote training as well. The binocular vision VR gives you compared to flat screens help a lot with depth perception for precision of incisions for example.

Re: Discovery Loop

#218

Post by jszymborski »

> Scientific discovery is bottlenecked.

Yah, by funding and how we award it, not by an imaginary lack of undergrad and grad students. Scientific funding requires a shotgun approach and many national science funds try to pick winners as opposed to funding broadly. When the folks who researched bacteria in volcanic vents or the molecular biology of the Gila monster they never could have imagined the industries and markets they'd create let alone the lives they'd impact (i.e., PCR and GLP-1 agonists). Lots of grants require you to explain how the work is "translational" or has some sort of economic application (even if not explicitly), but that'll just get us faster horses or whatever the Ford quote is.

Re: Discovery Loop

#219

Post by m3kw9 »

aaronharnly wrote: post #183
m3kw9 wrote: post #169

The AI designed italics on thin font is hard to not see as slop.

You know when the page has all-caps "01 — THE APPROACH" that it is slopified. I guess I shouldn't be astounded, but I am, that world-class talents with world-class backing are just taking default LLM output and saying, "okay looks fine".

They would argue they are focused on more important stuff, but marketing shouldn't be underestimated.

Re: Discovery Loop

#220

Post by embedding-shape »

lovlar wrote: post #152
cjbarber wrote: post #18

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…

> 9. Reverse Engineer the Brain For what purpose? To replace humans? To make social media more addictive? To master brain manipulation?

> For what purpose?

To understand, same reason you reverse engineer anything. Doesn't have to have a further goal than that, understanding the brain better helps in so many ways. But like most technology, obviously can be used for bad too. Should we just skip researching some topics then?

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