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

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

#31

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…

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

#32
post #20
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with that. Classically used "AI benchmarks" need to be questioned. In my field, these guys have dropped a bomb, and no one seem to care: https://hal.science/hal-04715638/document

Can you give brief summary why this paper is a breakthrough for an outsider of the field?

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 (reconstructed by the methods in the paper in most cases) show that the models can't really be distinguished based on their mean.

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

#33

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…

> but things like buying million-dollar equipment just to use up the budget, which then sits idle.

That's not specific to the US, and it's because of a perverse incentive coming from those who assign the funds.

If you don't use them they cut your funding for the next cycle.

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

#34

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…

If they didn’t say that the rah-rah-AI crowd would come for them with torches and pitchforks. It’s a ward against that, nothing more.

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

#36

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…

> AlphaEvolve’s procedure found an algorithm to multiply 4x4 complex-valued matrices using 48 scalar multiplications, improving upon Strassen’s 1969 algorithm that was previously known as the best in this setting. This finding demonstrates a significant advance over our previous work, AlphaTensor, which specialized in matrix multiplication algorithms, and for 4x4 matrices, only found improvements for binary arithmeti…

That's less LLM and more three projects by DeepMind team.

And it's far from commercial availability.

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

#37

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…

"AI is a competent specialist in all fields except in mine."

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

#38

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.

AI looks exactly like NFTs to you? I don't understand what you mean by that. AI already has tons more uses.

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

#39

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.

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.

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

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When politicians get involved in research scientific proof and reason aren't always winning.

Didn't a politician invent the internet ?

That’s a meme created and spread by pseudo-journalist Declan McCullagh specifically to tar Al Gore in the lead-up to the 2000 election.

Specifically, Gore said in an interview that he “took the initiative in creating the Internet” by introducing the bill to allow commercial traffic on ARPAnet, which McCullagh twisted in an article to “Al Gote claimed he invented the Internet” in order to to smear him.

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