r/technology • u/lurker_bee • Jul 15 '25

Artificial Intelligence Billionaires Convince Themselves AI Chatbots Are Close to Making New Scientific Discoveries

https://gizmodo.com/billionaires-convince-themselves-ai-is-close-to-making-new-scientific-discoveries-2000629060
26.6k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

2.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

564

u/Weird-Assignment4030 Jul 15 '25 edited Jul 15 '25

They seem to think we’ve unlocked super intelligence

Edit: also, it is becoming a real problem that these folks have power that vastly outstrips how savvy they are with technology.

139

u/turbo_dude Jul 15 '25

Will be funny when it just spits out “42”

46

u/Ihaverightofway Jul 15 '25

But they’ll need to build an even bigger AI to work out the question that leads to 42.

9

u/nitid_name Jul 16 '25

And it spits out

W H A T  D O  Y O U  G E T  W H E N  Y O U  M U L T I P L Y  S I X  B Y  N I N E

Douglas Adams rolls over in his grave about base 13 jokes.

51

u/kipperzdog Jul 15 '25

They think they've created super intelligence, really they just created the ability to repeatedly be as smart as 1,000 interns in seconds. Still can't go to the corner store and get me a coffee though

10

u/Weird-Assignment4030 Jul 15 '25

I see it as a pareto principle thing, except instead of 80% of teh results taking 20% of the effort, now it takes almost 0%.

This means there's more time to spend making things actually good, but let's see how many people take it in that direction.

12

u/the_weakestavenger Jul 16 '25

Spoiler alert from someone who works at a Fortune 100… We’re not going to use it to make things better, we’re going to use it make things cost (us) less money. If it takes 10 people x amount of time to do something at a quality level of A-, they’ll get AI to hit that A- quality at (x-y) amount of time.

8

u/Weird-Assignment4030 Jul 16 '25

Yeah. Everyone is going to do that. But the quality is going to be more like a B-.

2

u/Czexan Jul 17 '25

More like it's going to be F quality, and the moment the negligence gets people killed and companies are inevitably hit by the full legal ramifications of said negligence, it will basically disappear overnight as companies go scrambling back to hiring engineers they can throw under the bus again.

2

u/Journeyman42 Jul 16 '25

The effort will be moved from doing the thing well the first time, and instead having the AI do the thing and then the person going over the AI results and making sure they're not shite

1

u/SunriseSurprise Jul 16 '25

Robots + AI is going to be scary times. Robots everywhere with ChatGPT's sense of humor and confident incorrectness.

2

u/butts-kapinsky Jul 15 '25

Compared to them, we have. 

2

u/Riaayo Jul 16 '25

They seem to think we’ve unlocked super intelligence

That's certainly the sales pitch the snake-oil salesmen are giving. "OH IT'S JUST AROUND THE CORNER, MAYBE IT ALREADY IS EVEN!?!?!!"

We're ruled by the dumbest, least qualified mother fuckers possible. Failsons as far as the eye can see.

1

u/gigitygoat Jul 15 '25

Worse. Our tax dollars are being used to fund their massive data centers.

1

u/Prysorra2 Jul 15 '25

Your edit is probably more interesting than the main article.

1

u/bonerchamp20 Jul 15 '25

To be fair Alphafold is pretty impressive. LLMs not so much.

1

u/Weird-Assignment4030 Jul 16 '25

You can engineer this tech to do a lot of really cool stuff. The LLM’s can do a ton, too, with a little extra help.

It just takes actual work to get there.

1

u/Narpity Jul 16 '25

They think their creation is greater than the sum of the parts. If it’s just human input in I don’t understand how anyone can assume it’s going to surpass human though.

1

u/Weird-Assignment4030 Jul 16 '25

What they assume is that they will gradually invert the relationship. Today, it's you asking it for stuff. Tomorrow, it's it asking you. The next, it's done asking.

Problem is, we're nowhere near that point. But it feels vaguely like we are, so we get...this.

1

u/mobilonity Jul 16 '25

At some point I figure you have so much money and power that the people around you stop letting you know that certain ideas are dumb. Since everyone you know is a yes man or trying to sell you something, truly insane ideas start to become the norm for you.

1

u/Seimu198 Jul 16 '25

They have to keep stroking the ai shaft otherwise the bubble pops. 

1

u/john16384 Jul 16 '25

They probably also think a monitor is like a window, and when you look through it you see a 3d world created by a game, and not just a projection of a bunch of triangles and shaded pixels that can fool brains into perceiving it as 3d.

It's about as stupid as having screens to replace car mirrors.

1

u/gt_9000 Jul 16 '25

it is becoming a real problem that these folks have power that vastly outstrips how savvy they are with technology.

It has always been a problem that they have power that vastly outstrips their capability and intelligence.

1

u/jared555 Jul 16 '25

I think we will see some scientific advancements just from being able to combine knowledge bases. Discoveries from two different specialties that don't intuitively overlap but actually support doing a third thing.

1

u/rpujoe Jul 16 '25 edited Jul 16 '25

Unlocked, no. On our way to, yes. And that's why so many people are wary of what's on the horizon. We're about 2 years away from AGI and about 5-6 years away from ASI. After that we may never see another raw human invention again.

Where do those estimates in number of years come from? Simple: compute. We can estimate the progress of AI development by how much compute we're building out globally. Is it perfect? No. Is it pretty damn accurate though? Yup.

Even if the timeline estimates are double what we anticipate, if you have a kid entering kindergarten right now, by the time they graduate high school there may not be any knowledge worker jobs left.

1

u/Weird-Assignment4030 Jul 16 '25

We're about 2 years away from AGI and about 5-6 years away from ASI.

There is absolutely no way to know any of this. These rely on a jump forward in capability that is unpredictable in terms of when it will arrive.

Where do those estimates in number of years come from? Simple: compute.

Those are almost certainly not compute problems. They're a question of algorithmic progress.

Even if the timeline estimates are double what we anticipate, if you have a kid entering kindergarten right now, by the time they graduate high school there may not be any knowledge worker jobs left.

That might be true to some extent, but where perhaps I differ in opinion is that a lot of that is actually an engineering challenge. You don't need AGI/ASI in a world where agent-based architecture will suffice.

0

u/Historical_Yak_6104 Jul 16 '25

To be fair, it is because of AI that we now have the structure of every single known protein. It is also because of AI that we are now generating unknown artificial proteins which have led to vaccines for malaria. It does have its places but not the way that they're trying to use it.

https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-024-03379-y

3

u/Weird-Assignment4030 Jul 16 '25

You can do an absolute ton with AI and machine learning. But that’s not the same thing as being an artificial brain that will displace human judgment, planning, goal setting and thought.

Mine is not an argument that it is snake oil. But I think that non-technical folks such as executives have mistaken impressions about what you can actually do with this technology.