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John Jumper: AI is revolutionizing scientific discovery [video]

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Re: John Jumper: AI is revolutionizing scientific discovery [video]

#11

Post by whatever1 »

malux85 wrote: post #2

First jump that computers gave us : speed. With excess of speed came the ability to brute force many problems. Next jump given by AI (not LLMs specifically, I mean “machine learned systems” in general) is navigation. Even with large amounts of speed some problems are still impractically large, we are using AI to better explore that space, by navigating it smarter, rather than just speeding through it combinatorially.

No evidence so far that "AI" has improved our general optimization capabilities. At all.

Still at the top of the benchmarks of integer optimization by huge margin are the traditional usual suspects. Same in constraint programming and SAT.

Re: John Jumper: AI is revolutionizing scientific discovery [video]

#13

Post by epolanski »

I'll share something as a former solar researcher.

Scientific progress is heavily influenced by how many bodies you can throw at a problem.

The more experiments you can run, with more variety and angles the more data you can get, the higher the likelihood of a breakthrough.

Several huge scientist are famous not because they are geniuses, but because they are great fundraisers and can have 20/30/50 bodies to throw at problems every year.

This is true in virtually any experimental field.

If LLMs can be de facto another body then scientific progress is going to sky rocket.

Robots also tend to be more precise than humans and could possibly lead to better replication.

But given that LLMs cannot interact with the real world I don't see that happening anytime soon.

Re: John Jumper: AI is revolutionizing scientific discovery [video]

#14

Post by lomase »

whatever1 wrote: post #11
malux85 wrote: post #2

First jump that computers gave us : speed. With excess of speed came the ability to brute force many problems. Next jump given by AI (not LLMs specifically, I mean “machine learned systems” in general) is navigation. Even with large amounts of speed some problems are still impractically large, we are using AI to better explore that space, by navigating it smarter, rather than just speeding through it combinatorially.

No evidence so far that "AI" has improved our general optimization capabilities. At all. Still at the top of the benchmarks of integer optimization by huge margin are the traditional usual suspects. Same in constraint programming and SAT.

If you only know how to use a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

Re: John Jumper: AI is revolutionizing scientific discovery [video]

#15

Post by NedF »

Awful title, great video.

Three points jumped out

1) "really when you look at these machine learning breakthroughs they're probably fewer people than you imagine"

In a world of idiots, few people can do great things.

2) External benchmarks forced people upstream to improve

We need more of these.

3) "the third of these ingredients research was worth a hundredfold of the first of these ingredients data."

Available data is 0 for most things.

Re: John Jumper: AI is revolutionizing scientific discovery [video]

#16

Post by bonoboTP »

epolanski wrote: post #13

I'll share something as a former solar researcher. Scientific progress is heavily influenced by how many bodies you can throw at a problem. The more experiments you can run, with more variety and angles the more data you can get, the higher the likelihood of a breakthrough. Several huge scientist are famous not because they are geniuses, but because they are great fundraisers and can have 20/30/50 bodies to throw at…

> But given that LLMs cannot interact with the real world

What type of interaction do you envision? Could a non-domain-expert, but somewhat trained person provide a bridge? If the LLM comes up with the big ideas and tells a human technical assistant to execute (put the vial here, run the 3D printer with this file, put the object there, drive in a screw), would that help? But dexterous robots are getting more and more advanced, see CoRL demos right now.

Re: John Jumper: AI is revolutionizing scientific discovery [video]

#17

Post by hodgehog11 »

whatever1 wrote: post #11
malux85 wrote: post #2

First jump that computers gave us : speed. With excess of speed came the ability to brute force many problems. Next jump given by AI (not LLMs specifically, I mean “machine learned systems” in general) is navigation. Even with large amounts of speed some problems are still impractically large, we are using AI to better explore that space, by navigating it smarter, rather than just speeding through it combinatorially.

No evidence so far that "AI" has improved our general optimization capabilities. At all. Still at the top of the benchmarks of integer optimization by huge margin are the traditional usual suspects. Same in constraint programming and SAT.

Here is some evidence for you then: https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.00566

Not published just yet are experiments for finding solutions to mathematical problems traditionally found with SAT solvers, at much larger scale than was previously possible.

Re: John Jumper: AI is revolutionizing scientific discovery [video]

#19

Post by hiddencost »

epolanski wrote: post #13

I'll share something as a former solar researcher. Scientific progress is heavily influenced by how many bodies you can throw at a problem. The more experiments you can run, with more variety and angles the more data you can get, the higher the likelihood of a breakthrough. Several huge scientist are famous not because they are geniuses, but because they are great fundraisers and can have 20/30/50 bodies to throw at…

I liked this proof of concept:

https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.06503

They set up scoreable computational science problems and do search over solutions.

Re: John Jumper: AI is revolutionizing scientific discovery [video]

#20

Post by hodgehog11 »

some_guy_nobel wrote: post #8

NVIDIA published the Illustrated Evo2 a few days ago, walking through the architecture of their genetics foundation model: https://research.nvidia.com/labs/dbr/blog/illustrated-evo2/ It's nice to see more and more labs using ai for drug discovery, something truly net positive for society.

As someone who works in the field, it really doesn't feel like more money (proportionally speaking) is going to this. A little bit is done here and there for PR. The number that are working on net positive applications for AI is still shockingly low compared to everything else.
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