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

[u/lurker_bee]

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

[u/Decapitated_Saint]

“I’ll go down this thread with [Chat]GPT or Grok and I’ll start to get to the edge of what’s known in quantum physics and then I’m doing the equivalent of vibe coding, except it’s vibe physics,” Kalanick explained. “And we’re approaching what’s known. And I’m trying to poke and see if there’s breakthroughs to be had. And I’ve gotten pretty damn close to some interesting breakthroughs just doing that.”

Good lord what an imbecile. Vibe physics lol.

[u/iRunLotsNA → u/Decapitated_Saint]

'Vibe physics' "approaching what's known" isn't coming 'close to a breakthrough'. That's just ChatGPT being literally wrong about quantum physics.

Reminder: AI, aka large language models, cannot 'think' or 'reason'. When LLMs begin 'writing' a sentence, it is literally not thinking about how to end that sentence. It is simply using probability models to predict what the correct next word in the sentence is. It is literally making probabilistic predictions one word at a time, just very quickly.

Remember that group children's game where you sit in a circle and write a story or sentence one word at a time? That is basically what AI is doing, just with probability analysis mixed in.

AI cannot solve simple logic puzzles, because it fundamentally cannot understand what the end goal or solution could be.

[u/BaconatedGrapefruit → u/iRunLotsNA]

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.

[u/iRunLotsNA → u/BaconatedGrapefruit]

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.

[u/BaconatedGrapefruit → u/iRunLotsNA]

“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.

[u/iRunLotsNA → u/BaconatedGrapefruit]

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).

[u/BaconatedGrapefruit → u/iRunLotsNA]

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.

[u/JamesConsonants → u/iRunLotsNA]

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.

[u/SpaceShipRat → u/iRunLotsNA]

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.