alt Hacker NewsI'll give you an example from my field (nuclear fusion). I have a small team working on an idea which I think would really advance the field. Our initial concept paper was published in 2019. Progress on it has been slow because we don't have enough manufacturing capabilities, budget, or time on the facility. Will AI solve that? Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty bullish on AI, and it's been phenomenally useful so far (I definitely feel like a 10x physicist in the last 6 months), but I don't see a swarm of agents putting fusion energy on the grid tomorrow.
Also, fwiw I have a personal test problem I give to every frontier model on release, which is to ask it to final a realatively obvious solution (in hindsight) to a minorly important open problem in my field. I know the answer, but havent gotten around to writing it up yet (it's really not that important). Every frontier model (so far) just regurgitates existing solutions.
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Iirc some of the prior math discoveries involved very very very heavy handed guidance to force the AI to discard prior assumptions, and to try many avenues with MAX effort. So ya models don’t behave like ground breaking theoreticians by default.
Ha, I had a similar little test problem, but the frontier models are now smart enough to read enough online of what I posted here and there to piece together the answer. And someone else has written the paper in the meantime and got it accepted for publishing.
Definitely. It will let some smooth-talker with a vibe-coded website raise billions for "Nuclear Fusion AI". Then they can use AI to squeeze your team with lawsuits until you agree to sell cheap, and maybe keep you on as an employee to build it.
How about swarm of agents controling a fleet of humanoids and automated construction vehicles?
I mean, you never know. If we could have simulation models with excellent fidelity, then AI could do all the research and iterations and come up with something very plausible. Cutting down physical world experimental iterations/prototyping.
So effectively, you would spend the first 1000 experiments inside a computer simulation and move to the physical world only when you had enough confidence.
How much effort do you put into prompting it? Are you asking it one shot with a simple prompt? Are you giving it to multiple agents and giving them a workspace to collaborate in? You might give it to a trusted colleague who does not know the solution along with an agreement to jointly publish, ask them to go through the process of solving it with agentic support, and then compare your solutions.
Edit: to be clear, I completely believe your experience - just pointing out that it might be interesting for you to actually “try” to solve it thoroughly with the tools, though it is obviously hard to do that in a fair way when you know the solution.