Could AI slow progress in science?
https://open.substack.com/pub/aisnakeoil/p/could-ai-slow-science?
what is progress in science? more papers, but fewer breakthroughs? (how do you measure “progress in science” or recognize a breakthrough?)
the low hanging fruit is picked? but progress should give is taller ladders. also, some progress is in the form of entirely new fields, new trees with new low hanging fruit.
nice bit about better pattern matching and better fits for models needs a better theory to justify the model — geocentric orbits with epicycles made better predictions than heliocentrism until Kepler realized orbits weren’t circular, but elliptic — heliocentrism progressed mostly because it was simpler than all those epicycles.
the gold is at the end of the paper, inspired by an essay by a mathematician named Thurston, who notes that the goal of mathematics is not proofs of theorems but human understanding. to what extent does a result from an AI circumvent human understanding?
