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I wonder if the best statement we can make for future AI discoveries is that, ideally, they will allow us to move up the Kardashev scale faster.

The new faster multiplication algorithms are both galactic, are they not?

It does not seem surprising to me at all that AI can find new galactic algorithms that are not of any direct use (at best they can guide us to find better solutions that are non-galactic).

What would be surprising and interesting is if AI can find a new floating point multiply-add that is 2X faster per operation than the current fastest chip implementations. That would immediately have billion+ dollar implications. The teams who already work on this have excellent approaches and invest enormous amounts into tiny improvements already; there are probably not much low-hanging fruit there (proponents of using AI for chip design improvements have impressive claims, but unclear that any of those really worked out in reality).

by redox999 hours ago|

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If we had really good understanding of physics, couldn't we find out how to make a room temperature superconductor (or prove it can't exist)?

Or is such understanding reliant in experimentation because there are "hidden constants" we can't figure out with math alone?

by teamonkey8 hours ago|

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We already do have a very good understanding of QCD, it’s a very successful model with 70 years of experimental results behind it. This proof may offer new insight but most likely will just be confirming what we already knew.

by dekhn7 hours ago|

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This is where I start to get curious.

Why haven't these theories had more impact on materials science? We use DFT and other greatly simplified approaches (with tremendous results) but still I suspect we are massively underperforming in terms of producing materials with useful properties.

by hershkumar6 hours ago|

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QCD simulations (like lattice QCD) are extremely expensive (exponential in the number of constituent quarks) and usually things like material properties require bulk physics, in large system sizes. The separation of scale between a theory like QCD and something like a simple metal makes it very difficult to practically do a first principles computation.