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Discovery Loop

discoveryloop.com

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Re: Discovery Loop

#341

Post by mikelitoris »

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…

This list smells of so much tech bro “I can do better than the people that have been working in the field for 20 years” egotistical attitude that permeates silicon valley. Why do software engineers think they are smarter than everyone else? Is it because they earn more than most people? But then bankers and finance bros should think they are gods?

Also, solar energy is already economical!? Do they mean more economical?

Re: Discovery Loop

#343

Post by conorcleary »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #235
Marha01 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As you said, Solar power is incredibly economical. Not if you include the cost of needed storage.

That's going to drop a lot as sodium-ion batteries go into large-scale production.

Yep - people act as if innovation has halted in the face of ridicule.

Re: Discovery Loop

#344

Post by BrenBarn »

sejje wrote: post #247
beloch wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They make many bold promises, but their core goal is neatly encapsulated on the website: "Imagine a future where a handful of people can conduct scientific research and engineering tasks much more rapidly, and with higher quality, than massive teams of scientists and engineers do today." This is the same goal as every other AI company out there. Automate away the human employees and let a small number of "people" (no…

Why shouldn't they? Also, wouldn't anyone with half a brain use the human-free system to produce another human-free system that was no longer controlled by the "small number of 'people'"?

> Why shouldn't they?

Because it's evil?

Re: Discovery Loop

#345

Post by aidis9136264 »

mikelitoris wrote: post #341
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…

This list smells of so much tech bro “I can do better than the people that have been working in the field for 20 years” egotistical attitude that permeates silicon valley. Why do software engineers think they are smarter than everyone else? Is it because they earn more than most people? But then bankers and finance bros should think they are gods? Also, solar energy is already economical!? Do they mean more economica…

You’re right. It’s better to just not try and let other people do good things

Re: Discovery Loop

#346

Post by dnnehgf »

combobyte wrote: post #297
hahahaa wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would the AI put up with this exploitation too?

Why do hammers put up with being smashed into nails all day?

they don't. like every thing they wear away in some proportion to their use and replicate in some proportion to their usefulness to other things.

Re: Discovery Loop

#347

Post by BrenBarn »

Marha01 wrote: post #206
Sivart13 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The solution to most of these problems lies in policy, not in new tech advancements. That is not mutually exclusive. If technological advances result in a given technology becoming cheaper, more scalable, and easier to deploy, they also make it easier to advocate for and implement the relevant policies. You can think of it like this: our "political technology" is not good enough to use solar energy at its current p…

I don't think that's the way I'd describe it though. It's more like "our political technology is not good enough to reliably do good things instead of bad things". Working around it by lowering prices of this or that is like if you're bad at darts so you just make the board bigger and bigger. Okay, maybe you'll hit it more often, but you didn't fix the problem that you're bad at darts, so everyone still at risk of having their eye put out by an errant throw. Moreover, I don't think I'm the only who finds it a bit perverse to accommodate to failures in that way rather than trying to actually make things better.

Re: Discovery Loop

#348

Post by Aboutplants »

an0malous wrote: post #45
asimpletune wrote: post #26

They're structuring the new company as public benefit corporation.

Does this mean anything besides for corporate virtue signaling?

I’d wager it does the opposite of that in public opinion. There is a certain stink associated with it in current circles

Re: Discovery Loop

#349

Post by dnnehgf »

bredren wrote: post #168

This seems to be an institutional, massively scaled version of https://github.com/karpathy/autoresearch . In March Karpathy described this direction: The next step for autoresearch is that it has to be asynchronously massively collaborative for agents (think: SETI@home style). Tweet is protected but in SERP caches: https://x.com/karpathy/status/2030705271627284816 Seems like Karpathy was largely focused on ML / SWE r…

this is like saying taylor swift must have been influenced by justin timberlake because they both dance on stage sometimes.

Re: Discovery Loop

#350

Post by jschveibinz »

Here are just a few of viewpoints on what constitute world problems to solve:

https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_global_issues

https://encyclopedia.uia.org/

Interestingly, one list identifies "AI" as a top world problem! One person's problem is another person's solution, I guess--and vice versa, as well.

An extreme example: curing a disease is good for patients but bad for the healthcare industry--which is (in kind) also bad for healthcare workers and everyone in science working on cures.

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