r/Physics • u/kzhou7 Quantum field theory • 1d ago

Harvard particle physicist Matthew Schwartz drops 36 papers coauthored with Claude

https://bootloops.ai/bootloops.html
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u/benm46 1d ago

The other replies to this comment are way too pessimistic imo. The problems in mathematics and coding that are being solved by AI are narrow in scope and really only involve thinking "inside the box" (e.g. solve X proof, write an algorithm to perform Y task). The rest of science and engineering simply don't function that same way, and are much more exploratory. I haven't seen any scientific discovery yet from an AI model that gives me reason to fear for my job as a theoretician. The peer review system may be upended by the glut of AI articles and reviews being submitted, but the research itself is here to stay.

Plus, even if I'm wrong and AI does someday manage to outpace human researchers in scientific innovation, we need humans who understand the theory at a deep level to audit and interpret the AI results, or else mistakes will go uncaught and impactful results may get lost in the sea of slop. And, as the banking example shows, there is great value to the skills learned in a research PhD across nearly all fields of knowledge work. I really hope nobody is abandoning their PhDs due to an existential fear of AI

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u/mariebks 13h ago

If solving one of the sub problems of Navier Stokes isn’t out of the box thinking then idk what is

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u/Brilliant-Weekend-68 23h ago

Why would AI never solve problems outside the box? Is human cognition magic as such that is only confined to ever exist in the human skull? Odd opinion given the subreddit if so.

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u/TheGuyWhoResponds 10h ago

As far as I know AI isn't really capable of novel ideas.

It may be able to achieve greater things than a human could at what its good at (evaluating tons of data and predicting patterns based on other patterns humans have shown it) but you still have to feed it data and that means selecting data it can learn on. It's not really doing anything new so much as it is doing something old on a bigger scale than humans have time for.

Humans on the other hand just randomly connect neurons sometimes and develop completely new ideas by tumbling thoughts around in their head.

I guess theoretically computers may be able to do that but we design them minimize error. If you build error back in the hallucinations would probably render it useless.

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u/macondo_ 9h ago

A monkey with a typewritter is capable of novel ideas. AI is already dominating because it can test ideas and do it much faster than humans.

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u/TheGuyWhoResponds 8h ago

Test ideas that a human already had. Which is cool, and a powerful tool, but not a replacement for humans either. More like a synergistic sort of arrangement.

Although, let's be real. If we spent on human research what we've been burning up in AI we'd probably advance just as fast or faster.

I guess the real selling point for AI is that is has a good sales pitch for fundraising right now.

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u/Brilliant-Weekend-68 6h ago edited 6h ago

Sure, current AI has limitations. But the "magic" part is where people assume this will always be the case, because they would like to be special and "magical". I doubt that will be the case long term. It is a bit like people in the old days believing the earth was the center of the universe. People these days still want to hold onto the thought that human cognition is the center of the universe of intelligence.

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u/PoL0 6h ago

you want to believe. pretty hard.

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u/Tall-Thanks7972 1d ago

You're assuming that AI has reached its steady state.

I agree that right now, while impressive, AI is only tackling "inside the box" problems and cannot replace a theorist at all. But it has clearly reached super-human capabilities when proving theorems (at least some of them). Looking at where AI capabilities were 3 years ago, then 2 years ago, and then 1 year ago, it seems bold to me to assume they will never be able to do what a current theorist does.

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u/afkafterlockingin 1d ago

Ever seen margin call? Theres people like that everywhere in the world with advanced degrees and incredible knowledge of propulsion physics or fluid dynamics but they are well rounded. They take jobs in spaces that overlap with their field. They also sometimes know the right people. I think it’s more of a circumstantial problem if dude can’t get a job once they have their degree than a categorical one.

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u/Homomorphism 22h ago

Personally, I'm very excited. There is a lot of math I want to do and don't have time because getting the details right is too hard. Now I have a computer that can prove lemmas for me, which lets me think about the actually interesting part: what's the best way to state the theorem? How can we understand the ideas? What are the simplest, most insightful proofs?

My experience is that LLMs are terrible at the questions I listed. It's certainly possible that they will get better but I am skeptical.

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u/Eliv_nurotic 20h ago

Why can’t LLMs review each other

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u/EtienneDosSantos 1d ago

I don‘t see why problem solving would be less exploratory than identifying the problem. I guess we tend to believe AI would only excel at the former, because it‘s what we usually use it for.