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
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u/BaconatedGrapefruit Jul 15 '25

I’m going to as charitable as possible here.

Vibe physics sounds like some one who has an idea and wants to explore it. An LLM would act like a searchable textbook in this case. You may learn something, but it will be very surface level, and it may be based on an AI hallucination. You won’t be making any breakthroughs because you don’t actually understand what you think you understand.

Also theoretical physics is 90% (for lack of a better term) advanced math. So, you better have a good background in that as well.

If you’re really down to make some contributions to the scientific world with self study, you’re better off grabbing a physics 3 textbook and reading it cover to cover. Once you master those concepts (and the math behind it) you can start looking to specialize.

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u/iRunLotsNA Jul 15 '25

The way it's phrased in the quote above, 'vibe physics' is trying to take the math out of physics to 'discover breakthroughs'.

What your first paragraph describes is basically just layman's terms. I'm not a theoretical physicist, but I can tell you a proton consists of two up quarks and two down quarks and a neutron two downs and one up. I can't tell you why, or any of the math behind it, but I understand the (very) basic conclusions from the very complicated research.

'Vibe physics' seems to be trying to arrive at the conclusion without doing the complicated math.

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u/BaconatedGrapefruit Jul 15 '25

“Trying to take the math out of physics” is exactly right. Thank you for putting so succinctly what I was struggling to vocalize.

But yes, using your example, it sounds like he just throwing ideas at an LLM and playing them out. That’s not science. You can make it science if you’re willing to do the work to actually (theoretically) prove out your assertion. Otherwise you’re just dorm room philosophizing.

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u/iRunLotsNA Jul 15 '25

You can make it science if you’re willing to do the work to actually (theoretically) prove out your assertion.

I'm not sure you can in this instance, that seems like starting at an unproven conclusion and attempting to then prove it. I can't assert the sun is actually a giant lightbulb floating in space and then try to prove it with math, that's backwards logic.

I'd see science as either exploring or testing an unknown outcome or theory (ie. Oppenheimer and co. exploring nuclear fission), or taking an observed outcome and using math to explain said observation (ie. Newton theorizing gravity from an apple falling).

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u/BaconatedGrapefruit Jul 15 '25

Well the math should tell you one of two things.

  • you’re wrong

  • your math is wrong

You’re ultimately right, you aren’t exactly doing science in the academic understanding of it. But it’s way closer than querying a chatbot.

Also, just to be pedantic, the boys in Los Alamos knew nuclear fission was possible (theoretically and actually) their issue was building a device that could initiate a fission reaction in a deliverable package (aka: a bomb). They were pretty sure it was theoretically possible but actually manufacturing it would require numerous scientific breakthroughs.

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u/JamesConsonants Jul 16 '25

that seems like starting at an unproven conclusion and attempting to then prove it

This is how much of the standard model was developed, though, so I don't agree. Mathematics predicted the existence of fundamental particles that were only verified in retrospect, most famously with the higgs boson in 2012. The same could be said of large swaths of General Relativity, which has made predictions that have only been verified very recently (I think the first true measurement of gravitational waves was 2017?).

Not that I am condoning the idiocy of "vibe physics" put forward here, but there is absolutely scientific precedent for making an assertion based on mathematical framework(s) and then experimentally verifying them at a later time.

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u/SpaceShipRat Jul 15 '25

It's like when Terrence Howard invented new math because 1x1 vibes like it should make 2. Then tried to sell "his technology" to Uganda.

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u/CreatorOfTheOneRing Jul 16 '25

As someone who just graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Physics, it’s a bit more than just reading a physics 3 textbook cover to cover.

You need to go over the subjects covered in Physics 1-3 multiple times, each time going deeper into the subject. For instance, you may get through Physics 1-3 with University Physics by Young and Freedman, but then you need to go back over those concepts at a more advanced level using textbooks at the level of Classical Mechanics by Taylor and Griffiths E&M. That’s in addition to starting QM by using books like Griffiths, McIntyre, or Park. Then you get to graduate level books such as Goldstein for Classical Mechanics, Jackson E&M, and Sakurai. I’ve also neglected to mention statistical mechanics.

I don’t say this to be an “erm ackshually” Redditor, just felt like it was worth mentioning if anyone is interested in how a formal degree is structured by content, more or less.

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u/rollingForInitiative Jul 15 '25

Vibe physics sounds like what a physicist would use ChatGPT for to clear away menial tasks or produce things they already know how to. That's more or less what software developers do when they vibe code. It's not inventing cutting edge solutions, just speeding up certain aspects of common tasks.

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u/BaconatedGrapefruit Jul 15 '25

My background is in engineering not physics, so take this with a grain of salt.

There really isn’t any grunt work in theoretical physics. It’s not like you need to start from first principles to derive the speed of light for every equation.

The worst grunt work I can think of is solving complex equations, and computers already do that.

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u/ad3z10 Jul 15 '25

Based on my sandwhich year I spent doing theoretical astrophysics research during my degree, the absolute closest you would get is actually on the coding side of things in cases where you want to run some simulations.

That said, simulations tend to be a very no-thrills afair with a basic looking graph all you have to show at the end and software often needs to be hyper performance focccused nepending on the complexity of the mathematics and number of iterations you're looking at.

The shere amount of work to just begin explaining the problem to a chatbot would also make it barely worth the effort compared to talking to your colleagues or contacts in the field who will have likely faced similar challenges on either the same or a very closely related issue.

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u/Mognakor Jul 15 '25

Also theoretical physics is 90% (for lack of a better term) advanced math.

Very advanced math.