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AI in my plasma physics research didn’t go the way I expected

understandingai.org

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Re: AI in my plasma physics research didn’t go the way I expected

#151

Post by BenFranklin100 »

thrdbndndn wrote: post #16
BenFranklin100 wrote: post #4

The author is a Princeton PhD grad working in physics. Funding for this type of work usually comes from the NSF. NSF is under attack by DOGE, and Trump has proposed slashing the NSF budget by 55%. A reason used to justify these massive cuts is that AI will soon replace traditional research. This post demonstrates this assumption is likely false.

Kinda off-topic, but about the cutting itself: I used to work in academia and was involved in NSF-funded programs, so I have mixed feelings about this. Waste and inefficiency are rampant. BTW I'm not talking about failed projects or research that were dimmed "not important", but things like buying million-dollar equipment just to use up the budget, which then sits idle. That said, slashing NSF funding by 50% won’t fi…

Research is a human endeavor and as all human endeavors it can be improved. But having personally known NSF funded researchers in the past, I can confidently say these are some of the most dedicated, hard-working people you will ever meet. Most of these people work 60-70 hrs a week for half the salary they could get in industry.

Also, industry is far from perfect too. Think of high-profile failures like the Apple car or Meta’s Metaverse, both of which wasted literally tens of billions of dollars, many times the entire annual NSF budget. Let’s not hold scientists to standards applied no where else.

Re: AI in my plasma physics research didn’t go the way I expected

#152

Post by skydhash »

sublimefire wrote: post #88

Great analysis and spot on examples. Another issue with AI related research is that a lot of papers are new and not that many get published in “proper” places, yet being quoted right/left/center, just look at google scholar. It is hard to repro the results and check the validity of some statements, not to mention that research which was done 4 years ago used one set of models and now another set of models with differ…

I’m not a scientist or a researcher, but anything based on statistics and data interpretation is immediately subject to my skepticism.

Re: AI in my plasma physics research didn’t go the way I expected

#153

Post by Ygg2 »

moffkalast wrote: post #145
Ygg2 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but those rely on setting up the evolve function. And they aren't well guaranteed to be better than humans. They might find you an improvement, but aren't guaranteed to do as shown here[1] (green means better, red means worse, gray means same). [1] https://youtu.be/sGCmu7YKgPA?t=480

Last I checked, humans weren't guaranteed to do anything either.

Sure, but they have one thing that makes them better than CPUs, they consume more ;)

Re: AI in my plasma physics research didn’t go the way I expected

#154

Post by rickdeckard »

strogonoff wrote: post #48
plasticeagle wrote: post #25

Does anybody else find it peculiar that the majority of these articles about AI say things like "of course I don't doubt that AI will lead to major discoveries", and then go on to explain how they aren't useful in any field whatsoever? Where are the AI-driven breakthroughs? Or even the AI-driven incremental improvements? Do they exist anywhere? Or are we just using AI to remix existing general knowledge, while making…

There is rarely a constructive discussion around the term “AI”. You can’t say anything useful about what it might lead to or how useful it might be, because it is purely a marketing term that does not have a specific meaning (neither do both of the words in its abbreviation). Interesting discussions tend to avoid “AI” in favour of specific terms such as “ML”, “LLM”, “GAN”, “stable diffusion”, “chatbot”, “image genera…

It's not even that certain sub-industries prefer "AI", it's the umbrella term a company can use in Marketing for virtually any automated process that provides a seemingly subjective result.

Case in point:

For a decade the implementation of cameras went through development, testing and tuning of Auto Exposure, Auto Focus and Auto White-Balance ("AAA") engines as well as image post-processing.

These engines ran on a Image Signal Processor (ISP) or sometimes on the Camera sensor itself, extensive work was done by Engineering Teams on building these models in order to optimize them to run on low-latency on an ISP.

Suddenly AI came along and all of these features became "AI features". One company started with "AI assisted Camera" to promote the process everyone was doing all-along. So all had to introduce AI, without any disruptive change in the process.

Re: AI in my plasma physics research didn’t go the way I expected

#155

Post by closewith »

ktallett wrote: post #149
closewith wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You would be wrong. I am actually quite perky, I just don't suffer foolish admin tasks easily. I only have meetings with a goal (not just for the sake of it), and then I simply make sure it is clear what the solution is, no matter whose idea it was. I don't care about being right or wrong in a meeting, I care that we have a useful outcome and it isn't an hour wasted. Having a meeting whereby the outcome of a meeting…

[flagged]

Re: AI in my plasma physics research didn’t go the way I expected

#156

Post by skydhash »

sgt101 wrote: post #127
tonii141 wrote: post #42

This article addresses the misconception that arises when someone lacks a clear understanding of the underlying mathematics of neural networks and mistakenly believes they are a magical solution capable of solving every problem. While neural networks are powerful tools, using them effectively requires knowledge and experience to determine when they are appropriate and when alternative approaches are better suited.

I think that while the mathematics of neural networks are clearly completely understood we do not really understand why neural networks behave the way that they do when combined with large amounts of real world data. In particular the ability of auto regressive transformer based networks to produce sequences speech while being immutable still shocks me whenever I think about it. Of course, this says as much about wha…

You can represent many things with numbers and build an algorithm that does stuff. ML techniques are formulas where some specifics constants are not known yet, so you go through a training phase to find them.

While combinations of words are infinite, only some makes sense. So there’s a lot of reccurent patterns there. When you take a huge datasets like most of the internet and digital documents. I would be more surprised if the trained model where incapable of producing correct texts as both the it’s overfitted to the grammar and the lexicon. And I believe it’s overfitted to general conversation patterns.

Re: AI in my plasma physics research didn’t go the way I expected

#157

Post by squidbeak »

StopDisinfo910 wrote: post #39
simianparrot wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s why it keeps looking exactly like NFT’s and crypto hype cycles to me: Yes the technology has legitimate uses, but the promises of groundbreaking use cases that will change the world are obviously not materialising and to anyone that understands the tech it can’t. It’s people making money off hype until it dies and move on to the next scam-with-some-use.

I don’t remember when NFTs and cryptos helped me draft an email, wrote my meetings minutes for me or allowed me to easily search information previously locked in various documents. I think there is this weird take amongst some on HN where LLMs are either completely revolutionary and making break through or utterly useless. The truth is that they are useful already as a productivity tool.

I think imagination may be the reason for this. Enthusiasts have kept that first wave of amazement at what AI is able to do, and find it easier to anticipate where this could lead. The pessimists on the other hand weren't impressed with its capabilities in the first place - or were, and then became disillusioned for something it couldn't do for them. It's naturally easier to look ahead from the optimistic standpoint.

There's also the other category who are terrified about the consequences for their lives and jobs, and who are driven in a very human way to rubbish the tech to convince themselves it's doomed to failure.

The optimists are right of course. A nascent technology at this scale and with this kind of promise, whose development is spurring a race between nation states, isn't going to fizzle out or plateau, however much its current iterations may come short of any particular person's expectations.

Re: AI in my plasma physics research didn’t go the way I expected

#158

Post by fluidcruft »

rickdeckard wrote: post #154
strogonoff wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is rarely a constructive discussion around the term “AI”. You can’t say anything useful about what it might lead to or how useful it might be, because it is purely a marketing term that does not have a specific meaning (neither do both of the words in its abbreviation). Interesting discussions tend to avoid “AI” in favour of specific terms such as “ML”, “LLM”, “GAN”, “stable diffusion”, “chatbot”, “image genera…

It's not even that certain sub-industries prefer "AI", it's the umbrella term a company can use in Marketing for virtually any automated process that provides a seemingly subjective result. Case in point: For a decade the implementation of cameras went through development, testing and tuning of Auto Exposure, Auto Focus and Auto White-Balance ("AAA") engines as well as image post-processing. These engines ran on a Im…

I agree it's completely meaningless. At this point I think marketing would label a toilet fill valve as "AI".

Re: AI in my plasma physics research didn’t go the way I expected

#159

Post by Aldipower »

rickdeckard wrote: post #154
strogonoff wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is rarely a constructive discussion around the term “AI”. You can’t say anything useful about what it might lead to or how useful it might be, because it is purely a marketing term that does not have a specific meaning (neither do both of the words in its abbreviation). Interesting discussions tend to avoid “AI” in favour of specific terms such as “ML”, “LLM”, “GAN”, “stable diffusion”, “chatbot”, “image genera…

It's not even that certain sub-industries prefer "AI", it's the umbrella term a company can use in Marketing for virtually any automated process that provides a seemingly subjective result. Case in point: For a decade the implementation of cameras went through development, testing and tuning of Auto Exposure, Auto Focus and Auto White-Balance ("AAA") engines as well as image post-processing. These engines ran on a Im…

I remember somethings similar when the term "cloud" came up. It is still someone else's server or datacenter with tooling.

Re: AI in my plasma physics research didn’t go the way I expected

#160

Post by sebastiennight »

fluidcruft wrote: post #158
rickdeckard wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not even that certain sub-industries prefer "AI", it's the umbrella term a company can use in Marketing for virtually any automated process that provides a seemingly subjective result. Case in point: For a decade the implementation of cameras went through development, testing and tuning of Auto Exposure, Auto Focus and Auto White-Balance ("AAA") engines as well as image post-processing. These engines ran on a Im…

I agree it's completely meaningless. At this point I think marketing would label a toilet fill valve as "AI".

Well the "smart toilet" is definitely a thing you can buy today:

> The integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) in bathroom fixtures, particularly toilets, is shaping the future of hygiene, convenience, and sustainability.

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