Discovery Loop • Hacker News Board

Re: Discovery Loop

#371

Post by fwlr » Thu, Aug 06, 2026, 12:50 AM UTC

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'"?

Because of the negative externalities. It’s the same reason you shouldn’t do any other thing that personally benefits you but imposes a greater cost on everyone.

Re: Discovery Loop

#372

Post by SubiculumCode » Thu, Aug 06, 2026, 12:54 AM UTC

I am siding with the "intelligence is not the bottleneck" crowd. Science takes more than reading literature and making a hypothesis. You have to run the experiment. And that is where messy reality will crush the naive, and resist any attempt to package it up into a factory-like innovation engine. But they will take your money, should you have some to invest.

Re: Discovery Loop

#373

Post by SubiculumCode » Thu, Aug 06, 2026, 12:56 AM UTC

aidis9136264 wrote: post #345

mikelitoris wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Or actually work with the people with domain expertise.

Re: Discovery Loop

#374

Post by zeronone » Thu, Aug 06, 2026, 12:57 AM UTC

Surprised that Sanjay is the tallest among them.

Re: Discovery Loop

#375

Post by dekhn » Thu, Aug 06, 2026, 12:57 AM UTC

xnx wrote: post #273

hiddencost wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These people are all already making 9 figure compensation packages, I think if they thought they could do the work they wanted at Google, they would.

Given the resources that would be available to them at Google: compute resources, data, etc. It's clear they want absolute freedom. Good for them. At this revolutionary turning point in history, I want the smartest people working in whatever area they want.

compute resources are scarce and folks are fighting over scraps at this point.

Re: Discovery Loop

#376

Post by WarmWash » Thu, Aug 06, 2026, 12:58 AM UTC

dude250711 wrote: post #68

swalsh wrote: post #51

By the middle of the 2030's the world we live in will be unrecognizable.

It will not be owned by top 1%?

Probably the top 1% AI.

I don't see any future reality where an ASI respects money piles.

Re: Discovery Loop

#377

Post by SubiculumCode » Thu, Aug 06, 2026, 1:00 AM UTC

nonameiguess wrote: post #147

drivebyhooting wrote: post #87

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…

You're halfway there, but the only impediment isn't on the side of the researchers. Many of these topics they're trying to solve involve human subject research. Even with tireless embodied researchers who work around the clock and don't require breaks, you can't make the thing you're studying happen faster. The biggest reason we use poor proxy measures for things like longevity and mortality research is the simple im…

As a scientist, I can confirm. Reality will likely kick their assess. Intelligence and creativity is not the bottleneck. Great scientists have 50 good ideas for every one they actually manage to execute on the grant->experiment->manuscript haul.

Re: Discovery Loop

#378

Post by sumedh » Thu, Aug 06, 2026, 1:01 AM UTC

zeronone wrote: post #374

Surprised that Sanjay is the tallest among them.

He was born in the US not India, good food/nutrition must have played the part :)

Re: Discovery Loop

#379

Post by lkbm » Thu, Aug 06, 2026, 1:03 AM UTC

delta_p_delta_x wrote: post #279

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…

> Provide Access to Clean Water ??? We don't need any AI for this. Start with separated sewage/wastewater and stormwater drains. Then accredited and highly scrutinised wastewater treatment and discharge into water bodies (or see below for a high-tech solution). As for clean water to the home, direct those stormwater drains to new reservoirs which sustain freshwater aquatic life. Protect aquifers from over-drainage, a…

> Good sanitation is a financial and political problem. The engineering has been solved for decades now.

This was true of computers, phones, books, washing machines, refrigerators, A/C...most technologies.

Turns out that doing the addition engineering to figure out how to do these things cheaply makes the political and financial problems way easier.

Re: Discovery Loop

#380

Post by BenFranklin100 » Thu, Aug 06, 2026, 1:05 AM UTC

nl wrote: post #361

BenFranklin100 wrote: post #359

From the self-stated bios, this group consists solely of CS guys. No biologist, physicist, linguist, chemist, biophysicist to be found. Based on this observation alone I call nonsense. These is AI bullshittery. These guys aren’t close enough to the problems to understand the challenges. Source: PhD Computational biophysicist turned experimentalist. I work with genuine scientists across a range of disciplines from neu…

Do you actually think that this group of founders will have trouble finding domain experts wanting to work with them?

“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. By automating the loops of discovery, the world will be able to make much more rapid advances across countless fields of science.”

The key point is these jackasses explicitly state, “ a handful of people” can replace “massive teams of scientists and engineers”.

These guys don’t even understand the nature of the challenge and neither do you apparently. If they did, they would realize that it indeed does require “massive teams of engineers and scientists” to solve our most pressing problems.