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How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Science

quantamagazine.org

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Re: How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Science

#31

Post by analog31 »

opportune wrote: post #22
starpilot wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Orbital equations are straightforward and deterministic, I am wondering why an AI would be needed for this? You could solve explicitly.

Well, an unperturbed orbit is straightforward and deterministic. But three+ body problems (which I believe the original comment is describing) do not have closed form solutions and are general simulated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-body_problem . The reason planet nine is suspected to exist is due to the commonalities in the orbits of trans-neptunian objects. That is, there appears to be a large gravitational…

Indeed, and it's worth generalizing that the vast majority of contemporary problems do not yield themselves to closed form solutions. We are constantly finding numerical solutions.

If you went to college when I did, first of all, you're eligible to join the AARP, and second, the problems that you studied were overwhelmingly solved in closed form. This was true in math as well, both in college and at the K-12 level.

Now, are ML algorithms worth adding to our tool belt of numerical methods? Oh, probably. When the fad is over, some useful applications will remain. We already use regression a lot, and that's a primitive form of ML.

Re: How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Science

#33

Post by balabaster »

antognini wrote: post #28
emiliobumachar wrote: post #13

Here's my crackpot idea, in case anyone out there is willing and qualified to put in the hard work: Start with a detailed model of the solar system. Make a million copies of it. In each copy, insert a planet in a random orbit, with random mass. Measure the orbits of everything, perturbed by the new planet. Feed the measurements of everything, except the new planet, to an A.I., and have it estimate the position of the…

As someone who used to work on the dynamics of few body systems this idea actually isn't too crazy. But there isn't really any need for AI (neural networks wouldn't be necessary). Things like deep learning are really useful when you don't have a good model for the underlying reality (coming up with a principled model of what cats look like is really hard), but in the case of planetary dynamics the physics is well und…

Wasn’t this concept the basis of the Netflix show Salvation where they found the asteroid plummeting on a collision course with earth?

Re: How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Science

#34

Post by gwern »

EGreg wrote: post #2

Can we use this to make an app and figure out the optimal diets for everyone? Or a GAN for generating the funniest jokes?

Speaking of diet: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/10/health/nutrition-diet-gen... https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/08/science/precision-medicin... https://www.gwern.net/docs/longevity/2019-rose.pdf

Diet response is so genetically confounded that I think it's going to be a while before you can make any sort of confident prediction, and just plain hard to predict even when you're using identical twins. Probably more leverage in figuring out how to make continuous glucose monitors more feasible to measure individual response directly.

Re: How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Science

#35

Post by nradclif »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #26
thrwayxyz wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[[citation needed]] What has been an amateur science breakthrough in the last century or two which didn't have at it's base some billions of dollars of government funding.

The Special Theory of Relativity, from some moonlighting patent clerk.

That was over a century ago (although within the “century or two” limit specified). But it’s not at all characteristic of the majority of scientific discoveries made in the last century, which were largely made by professional scientists and grad students on their way to becoming professionals. The list of Nobel Prizes in various sciences over the past century I think demonstrates this.

Re: How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Science

#36

Post by deepnotderp »

starpilot wrote: post #15
emiliobumachar wrote: post #13

Here's my crackpot idea, in case anyone out there is willing and qualified to put in the hard work: Start with a detailed model of the solar system. Make a million copies of it. In each copy, insert a planet in a random orbit, with random mass. Measure the orbits of everything, perturbed by the new planet. Feed the measurements of everything, except the new planet, to an A.I., and have it estimate the position of the…

Orbital equations are straightforward and deterministic, I am wondering why an AI would be needed for this? You could solve explicitly.

I think he's talking about many body problems.

Re: How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Science

#37

Post by nitwit005 »

antognini wrote: post #28
emiliobumachar wrote: post #13

Here's my crackpot idea, in case anyone out there is willing and qualified to put in the hard work: Start with a detailed model of the solar system. Make a million copies of it. In each copy, insert a planet in a random orbit, with random mass. Measure the orbits of everything, perturbed by the new planet. Feed the measurements of everything, except the new planet, to an A.I., and have it estimate the position of the…

As someone who used to work on the dynamics of few body systems this idea actually isn't too crazy. But there isn't really any need for AI (neural networks wouldn't be necessary). Things like deep learning are really useful when you don't have a good model for the underlying reality (coming up with a principled model of what cats look like is really hard), but in the case of planetary dynamics the physics is well und…

Here's a good talk from around the same date that I watched previously: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMCwezegPNg

Re: How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Science

#39

Post by D-Coder »

EGreg wrote: post #14
jacquesm wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or a GAN for generating the funniest jokes? You really want to be careful with that, Monty Python made an excellent documentary about the weaponization of such high grades of humor and the results, to put it mildly, weren't funny.

Sorry what? Can you offer us a link?

More than you want to know: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Funniest_Joke_in_the_World

Just the right amount: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yo9WHrTvks

Re: How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Science

#40

Post by alexmlamb2 »

starpilot wrote: post #15
emiliobumachar wrote: post #13

Here's my crackpot idea, in case anyone out there is willing and qualified to put in the hard work: Start with a detailed model of the solar system. Make a million copies of it. In each copy, insert a planet in a random orbit, with random mass. Measure the orbits of everything, perturbed by the new planet. Feed the measurements of everything, except the new planet, to an A.I., and have it estimate the position of the…

Orbital equations are straightforward and deterministic, I am wondering why an AI would be needed for this? You could solve explicitly.

It's kind of an inverse problem. Once you put the planets in position you can (reasonably easily?) simulate their oribts with some noise. The idea is that the neural network would try to quickly approximate which planet configurations could produce those stable orbits.
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