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Discovery Loop

discoveryloop.com

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Re: Discovery Loop

#441

Post by tern »

sp1nningaway wrote: post #430
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…

I don’t understand why all of these companies need to frame it like this. Why not a large amount of people doing an even larger amount of science?

I love this question. If history is a guide, some version of that is what will happen (employment doesn't seem to go down, despite technological progress and population + economic growth).

I suspect the root cause is that it's harder and scarier to imagine good outcomes. It exposes us to disappointment, and when you do it publicly, it looks "crazy".

Another explanation is that there's no direct consumer for "more." Individuals, corporations and states are not in themselves interested in "a larger amount of science," or anything analogous, despite the fact that they would all benefit ambiently.

The net effect is that it's only "safe" to claim reduced risk (i.e. lower costs).

Re: Discovery Loop

#442

Post by reasonableklout »

asadm wrote: post #180
holmesworcester wrote: post #176

Someone who left DeepMind over Google's agreement to provide military AI to the US government tried to get Jeff Dean to quit too: https://turntrout.com/why-i-left-google-deepmind Maybe this is what happens when someone with Jeff Dean's standing tries to quit? TBH, I'd rather have Jeff Dean working on the creepiest-possible tech for ICE than joining the race to automate AI research. Automating AI research is terrifyin…

> Automating AI research is terrifying. what why?

It depends what they mean by automating. But the classic argument goes:

* Each new generation of models has emergent capabilities we did not anticipate.

* We already have trouble monitoring and controlling the current generation (see HuggingFace incident).

* The more we let models shape their successors, the more out-of-distribution each generation's learning environment becomes.

* If not done carefully, we risk creating extraordinarily intelligent and powerful models with unintended behaviors, like deceptiveness or power-seeking.

Re: Discovery Loop

#443

Post by anon373839 »

dekhn wrote: post #360
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…

The same thing happened before with every technological advance like cars and personal computers. I don't get this weird rejection of AI from a socialistic perspective. Or rather, I do, but I don't think it's healthy.

If you think the public rejection of AI is weird, wait till you catch a whiff of the marketing!

The future described by these AI labs isn’t like previous waves of technological progress. With those, technology displaced some/many occupations, but it left open the door to other, higher-valued career paths. What these labs are proposing to do is to dissolve virtually every path to upward mobility that exists, simultaneously. Even AI research itself would seemingly require nothing but a checkbook.

Mind you, I think it’s a load of hot garbage. I don’t see the evidence that LLMs are en route to the future these labs keep promising. But it is a dark and ugly future that they claim to be racing toward, for reasons.

Re: Discovery Loop

#444

Post by CamelCaseName »

sp1nningaway wrote: post #430
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…

I don’t understand why all of these companies need to frame it like this. Why not a large amount of people doing an even larger amount of science?

Isn't that directionally what OpenAI's core message was for a while?

A large amount of people building their own customized apps for themselves.

Similarily, everyone becoming their own accountant / lawyer / other professional services.

Re: Discovery Loop

#446

Post by lightingthedark »

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?

Maybe not 10, but my company (in the US) has relationships with several machine shops nearby (some within walking distance of our office) that do custom metal fabrication for us, and sendcutsend and xometry can handle more exotic stuff without having to ship it from Shenzhen. I think the bigger advantage of Shenzen is more for actually manufacturing at production volumes cheaply, although maybe if you need something really exotic? Custom metal fabrication is not a good example here, I have a neighbor who runs a custom CNC parts business out of his garage (said garage is largely taken up by his CNC mill).

Re: Discovery Loop

#447

Post by visarga »

krapp wrote: post #433
sp1nningaway wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand why all of these companies need to frame it like this. Why not a large amount of people doing an even larger amount of science?

Because one of the primary goals of using AI for companies is to pay as few humans as possible for the same amount or more work, or preferably pay no humans at all, because that makes them more profit.

What happens is that your competition uses AI, your investors factor AI in, and your customers use AI agents to find what they need and can switch providers with greater ease in the agentic era. So even if a company does nothing the economic environment around it changed. The AI boost is mandatory but produces few winners, it's mostly a scramble to swim harder just to stay in place. Benefits are competed away fast.

So it does not follow that companies can bank the savings from firing people. Anything AI can do for me it can do for my competition as well, and humans still make the difference. The big question in the AI age is "why pick me?" why hire me, why invest in my company, why buy my product, in a sea of similar products made by everyone. A differentiation crisis accentuated by AI.

Re: Discovery Loop

#449

Post by KuriousCat »

sp1nningaway wrote: post #430
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…

I don’t understand why all of these companies need to frame it like this. Why not a large amount of people doing an even larger amount of science?

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