Comment by nritchie
11 hours ago
This comment totally misunderstands why scientists get into science. Let me tell you, it isn't the money. It is for the joy of exploring the frontier. LLM's are taking this from us. Maybe they will be better than us but I'm not sure how many scientists will get into science for the joy of being an understudy to an LLM.
Yes, exploration is exactly why I enjoy research. Knowledge is, after all, the final frontier.
(Space is NOT the final frontier; sorry Trekkies. The real barrier to space is the ability to traverse non-trivial expanses of space in human time, and that will only be solved by Science.)
And when it comes to AI in research, we have just been handed a relativistic starship to explore the boundaries of our knowledge, instead of the paddle boats we've been using all this time. I would choose to adapt and try to harness this new power rather than mourn the loss of paddling.
It doesn’t misunderstand, it just treats that as irrelevant, which it is.
If you could press a button and obliterate the joy experienced by every professional at their work, in exchange for a 1% boost in marginal productivity for the next 2 quarters, would you do it?
More to the point, what if the button gives a 10% quarterly boost in productivity for the next 100 quarters. But 80% of the professionals get fired and the other 20% have harder jobs that feel more managerial. Then, yeah I would press it.
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I'm afraid this only serves to more vividly depict scientists as rent-seeking
I'd do it in exchange for nothing, the sooner human labor is rendered obsolete the better.
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