Comment by stephantul

9 hours ago

I’ve always felt that the idea that science is bottlenecked and therefore needs more automation only works for a very narrow definition of what science is, and entails a very specific view on what it should be.

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stephantul

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hobofan  9 hours ago

> only works for a very narrow definition of what science is

And so does academia. It's just that instead of AI and robotics, PhD students are thrown onto problems that are in large parts slightly tweaked reconfigurations of similar experiments.

Especially in chemistry, biochemistry, material sciences there is a large space of discoveries that are barely "novel" in an intellectually stimulating way, but still highly valuable that can be explored orders of magnitudes faster than is currently the case.

  • stephantul  9 hours ago

    That is true, I’ve seen people do biochemistry and geology work, and it did look very mind-numbing.

    Then again, gassing rats and taking biopsies is not something you can do with AI.

    • roughly  8 hours ago

      > Then again, gassing rats and taking biopsies is not something you can do with AI.

      Also, like, let’s maybe _not_ make the “gassing and cutting living organisms open” AI? Let’s just leave that particular genie in its bottle?

    • smcg  7 hours ago

      Unfortunately, that's most of science. I don't see these AI systems doing reproducible experiments in "meatspace" any time soon.

  • porridgeraisin  9 hours ago

    Yep. A communications professor where I did my MS says a 200usd/mo claude sub (which ant gives for free) does as much work as 5 grad students. It's mostly like you said, trying out new ideas rapidly.