Comment by adastra22

In many fields the limitation is not thinking. In my field (particularly obscure UHV surface science) we are limited by experimental results, and that experimental data is limited by the number of operable machines in particular configurations. These are multi-million dollar specialized machines that are artisanally made. There's a small, single-digit number produced each year, and each one is hand-calibrated to its task.

Due to computational limitations, this is not work that can be effectively simulated on a classical computer. Actual experimentation is required.

I fail to see what impact improved AI would have on this problem. Perhaps better selection of experimental problems for our limited capacity to run experiments, but that's assuming there is any slack left to take up. In reality we already have more brainpower than needed applied to this problem.