alt Hacker NewsAccess old ideas? Yes. With new perspectives? Not necessarily. An LLM may be able to assist in interpreting data with new perspectives but in practice they're still fairly bad at greenfield work.
As with most things, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. LLMs can be helpful as a way of accelerating certain kinds and certain aspects of research but not others.
> Access old ideas? Yes. With new perspectives?
I wonder if we can mine patent databases for old ideas that never worked out in the past, but now are more useful. Perhaps due to modern machining or newer materials or just new applications of the idea.