this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2024
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I think AI is neat.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

why do you think LLMs will revolutionise science

Idk it probably won't. That wasn't exactly what I was saying, but I'm also not an expert in any scientific field so that's my bad for unintentionally contributing to the hype by implying AI is more capable than it currently is or has the potential to be

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Fair enough, I used to be scientist (a very bad one that never amounted to anything) and my perspective has been that the major barriers to progress are:

  • We've just got all the low hangingfruit
  • Science education isn't available to many people, perspectives are quite limited consequently.
  • power structures are exploitative and ossified, driving away many people
  • industry has too much influence, there isn't much appetite to fund blue sky projects without obvious short term money earning applications
  • patents slow progress
  • publish or perish incentivises excessive volumes of publication, fraud, and splitting discoveries into multiple papers which increases burden on researchers to stay current
  • nobody wants to pay scientists, bright people end up elsewhere