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qnleightoday at 4:58 AM2 repliesview on HN

But human researchers are also remixers. Copying something I commented below:

> Speaking as a researcher, the line between new ideas and existing knowledge is very blurry and maybe doesn't even exist. The vast majority of research papers get new results by combining existing ideas in novel ways. This process can lead to genuinely new ideas, because the results of a good project teach you unexpected things.


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blackcatsectoday at 5:36 AM

This is a way too simplistic model of the things humans provide to the process. Imagination, Hypothesis, Testing, Intuition, and Proofing.

An AI can probably do an 'okay' job at summarizing information for meta studies. But what it can't do is go "Hey that's a weird thing in the result that hints at some other vector for this thing we should look at." Especially if that "thing" has never been analyzed before and there's no LLM-trained data on it.

LLMs will NEVER be able to do that, because it doesn't exist. They're not going to discover and define a new chemical, or a new species of animal. They're not going to be able to describe and analyze a new way of folding proteins and what implication that has UNLESS you basically are constantly training the AI on random protein folds constantly.

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konarttoday at 6:05 AM

>But human researchers are also remixers.

Some human researchers are also remixers to Some degree.

Can you imagine AI coming up with refraction & separation lie Newton did?

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