I wonder if the best statement we can make for future AI discoveries is that, ideally, they will allow us to move up the Kardashev scale faster.

The new faster multiplication algorithms are both galactic, are they not?

It does not seem surprising to me at all that AI can find new galactic algorithms that are not of any direct use (at best they can guide us to find better solutions that are non-galactic).

What would be surprising and interesting is if AI can find a new floating point multiply-add that is 2X faster per operation than the current fastest chip implementations. That would immediately have billion+ dollar implications. The teams who already work on this have excellent approaches and invest enormous amounts into tiny improvements already; there are probably not much low-hanging fruit there (proponents of using AI for chip design improvements have impressive claims, but unclear that any of those really worked out in reality).