> if it does it 30 times with improvements, then maybe, but even then, to actually be relevant it has to do better than paying scientists to do the work for the same cost, consistently.

Not necessary. Scientists are capacity limited and supply limited.

> RSI still means nothing if it costs 1000x the cost to get the same improvements as a human researcher

It means you can replace a human researcher with 1000x their salary burned on electricity. It also mean you can get two of them for 2000x of salary of one,

That's a bargain, actually, even with the anomalous, absurdly-overinflated salaries in top-tier ML.

I you knew it was consistent, then these companies would immediately fire their scientists, and burn 10 000x as much as mean researcher salary this month to be able to 10x their virtual headcount overnight, and then use that to make the 1000x be 500x, then 250x, then 125x, then ... and at that point they'd had all the money in the world, because even more skeptical investors would notice what's going on there.

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TL;DR: what you all seem to miss is that electricity scales better than people.