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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

#261

Post by sn9 »

skydhash wrote: post #152
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.

This is silly.

There are practices like pre-registration, open data, etc. that can make results much more transparent and replicable.

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

#262

Post by dekhn »

elcritch wrote: post #259
dekhn wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> What "precise and accurate theory for protein folding" exists? It’s called Quantum Mechanics. > 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. No we don’t have simplified models or specialized theories to reduce the computational complexity enough to efficiently solve the QM or even molecular dy…

I don't think anybody is 100% certain that doing a full quantum simulation of a protein (in a box of water) would recapitulate the dynamics of protein folding. It seems like a totally reasonable claim, but one that could not really be evaluated.

If you have a paper that makes a strong argument around this claim, I'd love to see it. BTW- regarding folding funnels, I learned protein folding from Ken Dill as a grad student in biophysics at UCSF, and used to run MD simulations of nucleic acids and proteins. I don't think anybody in the field wants to waste the time worrying about running full quantum simulations of protein folding, it would be prohibitevly expensive even with far better QM simulators than we have now (IE, n squared or better).

Also the article you linked- they are trying to find the optimal structure (called fold by some in the field). That's not protein folding- it's ground state de novo structure prediction. Protein folding is the process by which an unfolded protein adopts the structured state, and most proteins don't actually adopt some single static structure but tend to interconvert between several different substructes that are all kinetically accessible.

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

#263

Post by xeonmc »

angry_moose wrote: post #227

I've been "lucky" enough to get to trial some AI FEM-like structural solvers. At best, they're sortof ok for linear, small deformation problems. The kind of models where we could get an exact solution in ~5 minutes vs a fairly sloppy solution in ~30 seconds. Start throwing anything non-linear in and they just fall apart. Maybe enough to do some very high-level concept selection but even that isn't great. I'm reasonab…

So it’s more like a “second principles” solver, it cannot synthesize anything that it hadn’t already seen before.

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

#265

Post by kjhughes »

-__---____-ZXyw wrote: post #264

Did the title get changed, or have I started hallucinating? Title is: "I got fooled by AI-for-science hype—here's what it taught me"

It got changed (for the worse, in my opinion) away from the original title.

The original title is supposed to be favored here unless it has a serious problem.

This original title had no serious problem, unless accurately summarizing a PhD candidate's thoughtful critique of some questionable AI contributions to scientific research is a serious problem.

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

#266

Post by const_cast »

rhubarbtree wrote: post #5

I think this is mostly just a repeat of the problems of academia - no longer truth-seeking, instead focused on citations and careerism. AI is just a.n.other topic where that is happening.

To be fair, the problems of careerism is really a side-effect of academia becoming more enthralled with the private sector, and therefore inheriting it's problems.

If there's one thing working as a software dev has taught me, it's that all decisions are made from a careerist, selfish perspective. Nobody cares what's best, they care what's most impressive and what will personally get them ahead. After it's done, it's not their problem. And nobody can blame them either. This mindset is so pervasive that if you don't subscribe to it, you're a sucker. Because other people will, and they'll just out-lap you. So the result is the same except now you're worse off.

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

#267

Post by tanderson92 »

kjhughes wrote: post #265
-__---____-ZXyw wrote: post #264

Did the title get changed, or have I started hallucinating? Title is: "I got fooled by AI-for-science hype—here's what it taught me"

It got changed (for the worse, in my opinion) away from the original title. The original title is supposed to be favored here unless it has a serious problem. This original title had no serious problem, unless accurately summarizing a PhD candidate's thoughtful critique of some questionable AI contributions to scientific research is a serious problem.

The present title is more friendly to VCs and the tech industry, shocking no one.

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

#268

Post by tanderson92 »

-__---____-ZXyw wrote: post #264

Did the title get changed, or have I started hallucinating? Title is: "I got fooled by AI-for-science hype—here's what it taught me"

No, you are not hallucinating: https://web.archive.org/web/20250520152757/https://news.ycom...

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

#269

Post by ethbr1 »

const_cast wrote: post #266
rhubarbtree wrote: post #5

I think this is mostly just a repeat of the problems of academia - no longer truth-seeking, instead focused on citations and careerism. AI is just a.n.other topic where that is happening.

To be fair, the problems of careerism is really a side-effect of academia becoming more enthralled with the private sector, and therefore inheriting it's problems. If there's one thing working as a software dev has taught me, it's that all decisions are made from a careerist, selfish perspective. Nobody cares what's best, they care what's most impressive and what will personally get them ahead. After it's done, it's…

The follow on from this is that any structure one wants to persist through time had better rest maximally on people acting in their own self interest.

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

#270

Post by parodysbird »

elcritch wrote: post #259
dekhn wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> What "precise and accurate theory for protein folding" exists? It’s called Quantum Mechanics. > 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. No we don’t have simplified models or specialized theories to reduce the computational complexity enough to efficiently solve the QM or even molecular dy…

> It’s called Quantum Mechanics.

Nobody is suggesting anything entails a possible violation of quantum mechanics, so yes, obviously any system under inquiry is assumed to abide by QM.

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