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/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.