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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

#231

Post by elcritch »

parodysbird wrote: post #161
Flamentono2 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already have breakthroughs. Benchmark results which have been unheard of before ML. Alone language translation got so much better, voice syntesis, voice transcription. All my meetings now are searchable and i can ask 'ai' to summarize my meetings in a relative accurate way impossible before that. Alphafold made a breakthrough in protein folding. Image and Video generation can now do unbelievable things. Realtime v…

> Alphafold made a breakthrough in protein folding. Sort of. Alphafold is a prediction tool, or, alternatively framed, a hypothesis generation tool. Then you run an experiment to compare. It doesn't represent a scientific theory, not in the sense that humans use them. It does not have anywhere near something like the accuracy rate for hypotheses to qualify as akin to the typical scientific testing paradigm. It's an i…

We already have a precise and accurate theory for protein folding. What we don’t have is the computational power to do true precise simulations at a scale and speed we’d like.

In many aspects a huge tangled barely documented code base written by inexperienced grad students of quantum shortcuts, err, perturbative methods isn’t that much more or less intelligible than an AI model learning those same methods.

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

#232

Post by thearn4 »

ausbah wrote: post #209

> After a few weeks of failure, I messaged a friend at a different university, who told me that he too had tried using PINNs, but hadn’t been able to get good results. not really related to AI but this reflects a lesson I learned too late during some research in college: constant collaboration is important because it helps you avoid retreading over areas where others have already failed

Another reason why the idea of AI agents for science hasn't made much sense to me. Research is an extremely collaborative set of activities. How good would a researcher be who is very good at literature review, but never actually talks to anyone, goes to any conferences, etc?

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

#233

Post by Konnstann »

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…

Depending on your definition of AI, a pipeline for drug repurposing my team used was able to identify a therapeutic for a rare disease that was beating the state of the art in every test they threw at it, eventually being given orphan drug designation by the FDA. I doubt this would have happened without machine learning or AI or whatever you want to call it.

I'm also against "agents as scientists" as a concept for numerous reasons, but deep learning etc has or is leading to breakthroughs.

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

#234

Post by stogot »

amarcheschi wrote: post #72
mzl wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Checking it shortly (I haven't seen the paper before) this seems to be a very good analysis of how results are reported specifically for medical imaging benchmarks. As is often the case with statistics, selecting just a single number to report (whatever that number is) will hide a lot of different behaviours. Here, they show that just using the mean is a bad way to report data as the confidence intervals (reconstruct…

Hell, I was asked to use confidence interval as well as average values for by bs thesis when doing ml benchmarks and scientist publishing results in medical fields aren't doing it... How can something like that happen? I mean, i had a supervisor tell me "add the confidence interval to the results as well", and explained me why. I guess that at nobody ever told them? Or they didn't care? Or it's just a honest mistake

Is it because it’s word-of-mouth and not written down in some NSF (or other organization) guidance? Thiss seems to be the issue

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

#235

Post by GuinansEyebrows »

elcritch wrote: post #229
sebastiennight wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

While automated AI measurement of the chemical makeup of .. human effluent could be helpful for tracking health trends, I fear it’d also come with built in integrations for Instagram and TikTok.

or (and i can actually see this happening) an Amazon integration to reorder bathroom tissue and bowl cleaner

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

#236

Post by kbelder »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #187
Flamentono2 wrote: post #64

I'm not sure why people on HN (of all places) are so divided regarding the perception of AI/ML. I have not seen anything like it before. We literaly had not system or way of even doing things like code generation based on text input. Just last week i asked for a script to do image segmentation with a basic UI and claude just generated that for me in under 1 Minute. I could list tons of examples which are groundbreaki…

The ultimate job of a programmer is to translate human language into computer language. Computers are extremely capable, but they speak a very cryptic overtly logical language. LLMs are undeniably treading onto that territory. Who knows how far in they will make it, but the wall is breached . Which is unsettling to down right scary depending on your take. It is a real threat to a skill that many have honed for years…

Yes, but the scale isn't 'unsettling' to 'scary'... it's from 'incredible' to 'scary'.

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

#237

Post by dekhn »

elcritch wrote: post #231
parodysbird wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Alphafold made a breakthrough in protein folding. Sort of. Alphafold is a prediction tool, or, alternatively framed, a hypothesis generation tool. Then you run an experiment to compare. It doesn't represent a scientific theory, not in the sense that humans use them. It does not have anywhere near something like the accuracy rate for hypotheses to qualify as akin to the typical scientific testing paradigm. It's an i…

We already have a precise and accurate theory for protein folding. What we don’t have is the computational power to do true precise simulations at a scale and speed we’d like. In many aspects a huge tangled barely documented code base written by inexperienced grad students of quantum shortcuts, err, perturbative methods isn’t that much more or less intelligible than an AI model learning those same methods.

What "precise and accurate theory for protein folding" exists?

Nobody has been able to demonstrate convincingly that any simulation or theory method can reliably predict the folding trajectory of anything but the simplest peptides.

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

#238

Post by mountainriver »

simianparrot wrote: post #28
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…

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.

Code assistants alone prove this to be false.

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

#239

Post by mountainriver »

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 don’t remember when they wrote half my code in a fraction of the time for my high paid SWE job.

I do have a bad memory from all the weed though, so who knows

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

#240

Post by DennisP »

mountainb wrote: post #212
Flamentono2 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already have breakthroughs. Benchmark results which have been unheard of before ML. Alone language translation got so much better, voice syntesis, voice transcription. All my meetings now are searchable and i can ask 'ai' to summarize my meetings in a relative accurate way impossible before that. Alphafold made a breakthrough in protein folding. Image and Video generation can now do unbelievable things. Realtime v…

One one hand, maybe it's good to have better searchable records, even if it's hard to quantify the benefit. On the other hand, now all your meetings produce reams of computer searchable records subject to discovery in civil and criminal litigation, possibly leading to far worse liability than would have been possible in a mostly email based business.

Maybe don't do crimes?

If the technology provides a major boost in productivity to ethical teams, and is useless for unethical teams, that kinda seems like a good thing.

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