> only works for a very narrow definition of what science is

And so does academia. It's just that instead of AI and robotics, PhD students are thrown onto problems that are in large parts slightly tweaked reconfigurations of similar experiments.

Especially in chemistry, biochemistry, material sciences there is a large space of discoveries that are barely "novel" in an intellectually stimulating way, but still highly valuable that can be explored orders of magnitudes faster than is currently the case.

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stephantul 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That is true, I’ve seen people do biochemistry and geology work, and it did look very mind-numbing.

Then again, gassing rats and taking biopsies is not something you can do with AI.

	▲	roughly 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> Then again, gassing rats and taking biopsies is not something you can do with AI. Also, like, let’s maybe _not_ make the “gassing and cutting living organisms open” AI? Let’s just leave that particular genie in its bottle?
	▲	smcg 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Unfortunately, that's most of science. I don't see these AI systems doing reproducible experiments in "meatspace" any time soon.

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porridgeraisin 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yep. A communications professor where I did my MS says a 200usd/mo claude sub (which ant gives for free) does as much work as 5 grad students. It's mostly like you said, trying out new ideas rapidly.

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teamonkey 2 hours ago | parent [-]

The purpose of hiring grad students isn’t to advance science, it’s to train experts.

	▲	porridgeraisin an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Yes. They have grad students too. This is just like having more grad students that don't need to be trained so the work you can get done is not bottlenecked by the number of people you can train.
	▲	pickleRick243 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		It's 90% to advance science via cheap labor and 10% to train a small group of future experts who will hire grad students to 90% advance science via cheap labor etc. ...