Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Discovery Loop

discoveryloop.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 625 posts

Re: Discovery Loop

#411

Post by anon-3988 »

malaproping wrote: post #396
anon-3988 wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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." I don't think the US have this capability because you guys don't really have manufacturing that is really necessary for scientific research. For example, if I want a highly toxic chemical, how difficult it would be to…

> you guys don't really have manufacturing that is really necessary for scientific research Yea no high quality science research happens in the US? What?

There is but the cost is way, way higher from what I can tell. If I want a customized metal shielding with awkward shapes, I can just walk down to Shenzhen and have 10 people clamoring to make it. Does the US have the same?

Re: Discovery Loop

#412

Post by FuckButtons »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #372

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.

I’m not sure that I agree entirely with your framing here, yes, you do at some point need to correct your assumptions with external evidence. But clearly there have been many individuals throughout history who have had incredibly out sized impact in their respective fields as a consequence of the quality of their reasoning.

Re: Discovery Loop

#413

Post by FriedFishes »

frollogaston wrote: post #266
blahblaher wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at Australia then. Millions of homes already using solar yo basically power their homes for free most of the time. Yes it was subsidized, like oil was and still is. Solar without subsidies is already miles better than oil and gas.

Australia is a rich country that subsidizes solar, and they're still 90% fossil according to their Wikipedia article, so idk why the mismatch with this article.

Sounds like a perfect opportunity to put in an edit with the Wikipedia page then :)

Re: Discovery Loop

#414

Post by analog31 »

hellohello2 wrote: post #408
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…

Yes but science is well-structures and practically designed about repeatability so its a lot easier to automate than "softer" disciplines.

Are you a scientist? People have idealized views of science.

>>> Yes but science is well-structures and practically designed about repeatability so its a lot easier to automate than "softer" disciplines.

What AI is up against is that science is already automated to a high degree, so the AI doesn't just need to automate things, but it has to automate things better. Also, a lot of science work is in dealing with boundary conditions, edge cases, exceptions, hypotheses, and so forth. That work is essentially chaotic.

Do I think AI can improve automation? Sure. Everything I do in the lab is automated, and I use the AI coding assistant.

Re: Discovery Loop

#415

Post by hahahaa »

a2ff6eeb0 wrote: post #311
hahahaa wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would the AI put up with this exploitation too?

Why wouldn't it? There's a lot of research going into AI alignment, which means finding the best way to train an that AI isn't going to get in the way of making the people training it as wealthy as possible.

Capitalistic interests will save us. Maybe they will.

Re: Discovery Loop

#416

Post by jmknoll »

anon-3988 wrote: post #411
malaproping wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you guys don't really have manufacturing that is really necessary for scientific research Yea no high quality science research happens in the US? What?

There is but the cost is way, way higher from what I can tell. If I want a customized metal shielding with awkward shapes, I can just walk down to Shenzhen and have 10 people clamoring to make it. Does the US have the same?

Yes believe it or not in the US you can also buy things from fabricators in Shenzhen.

Re: Discovery Loop

#417

Post by dsubburam »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #372

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.

Would you side with the adjacent statement "expertise is not the bottleneck"? Didn't we recently discuss "LLMs reward expertise"?[1]

I suspect Discovery Loop will have to hire experts in each area they are targeting, to supervise and prompt their system effectively, much like the Terence Tao conversation with ChatGPT the OP cited[2].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49161518 [2] https://www.seangoedecke.com/llms-reward-expertise/

Re: Discovery Loop

#418

Post by rdedev »

FuckButtons wrote: post #412
SubiculumCode wrote: post #372

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.

I’m not sure that I agree entirely with your framing here, yes, you do at some point need to correct your assumptions with external evidence. But clearly there have been many individuals throughout history who have had incredibly out sized impact in their respective fields as a consequence of the quality of their reasoning.

That could just be selection bias. How about all the brilliant people we don't know about cause their theories did not match experimental data? Doesn't matter if their reasoning quality is top notch

Re: Discovery Loop

#419

Post by mpfh »

pm90 wrote: post #306

I think people are missing what this really is: Google giving some of its most senior engineers the best retirement home to keep them away from competitors. This isn’t in jest; I wish i could make enough money to not care for more from my job and then do research after i get old. Its honestly a brilliant move.

[dead]

Re: Discovery Loop

#420

Post by a2ff6eeb0 »

andai wrote: post #354
a2ff6eeb0 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think you'd be given access and permission to do this? If a company genuinely cracks this human free system problem, why would they open it up, instead of simply outcompeting everyone that doesn't have their product?

Is science hard to distil?

Why would they let you buy access to their AI, when it can autonomously design and build a new product without your involvement?
Post reply on HN