alt Hacker News> no LLM in the world can make them go faster
You mean the microbes have to double n-times (to get sufficient numbers of microbes) before tests can be run on them.
But maybe the LLMs figure out a way to run those tests on microbes that have only doubled 0.1(n-times).
You could then think of the LLMs as being a more honest version of Elizabeth Holmes.
If I remember correctly, the procedure was to prepare a food sample, put it in a temperature-controlled environment for 24 hours, and next day see if something grew there or not. If it did, the food was contaminated.
You could try shortening the time to 6 or 12 hours, but then
1) if something grew then the food was contaminated, but if it didn't, how can you be sure it is good or you just didn't wait enough? You would get a lot of false negatives.
2) the lab followed a normal 8 hours a day schedule, so nobody would be there to analize the results. You would not gain anything.