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points by sheepscreek 3 days ago | 0 comments
I mean, you never know. If we could have simulation models with excellent fidelity, then AI could do all the research and iterations and come up with something very plausible. Cutting down physical world experimental iterations/prototyping.

So effectively, you would spend the first 1000 experiments inside a computer simulation and move to the physical world only when you had enough confidence.

[–] Routine8502 3 days ago
I think you should realize that we already do that. In fact, that's one of the reasons computers were invented in the first place! It turns out that science is about unknown unknowns, and by definition simulations can't answer that.

But agents are really useful for doing some of the really boring stuff, like convergence checks or setting up meshes or whatever.

[–] sheepscreek 3 days ago
If you're talking about things at the equivalent level of say, finding out if positrons maintain symmetry with electrons for their magnetic moment, then yeah - I hear you. Or if you wanted to research some unknown behaviour of hot plasma at 15 million C, you can't do that in a simulation.

..or can we?

Humour me for a moment. Maybe simulating to the degree that was necessary for cutting edge work was not possible earlier, when humans had to program each and every thing in the system that could affect the result. But with current gen petaflop-on-your-desk level compute + swarms of agents that can work tirelessly to account for every known thing to humanity, maybe the threshold has been pushed far enough to produce some more meaningful discovery work in simulation?

[–] Routine8502 2 days ago
Respectfully, finding out how scientific computation is used in fusion research is a Google click away. And yes, we can simulate these conditions.

Let's put it this way - a first year graduate student can ignite a fusion target in simulations. It took thousands of scientists the better part of three decades to do that in experiments. I think agents could do the former really efficiently and at scale, but I'm skeptical that agents could do the latter. Oh, and btw, fusion simulations of the kind you're talking are in exa-zettaflop territory ;)

[–] sheepscreek 2 days ago
> Oh, and btw, fusion simulations of the kind you're talking are in exa-zettaflop territory

Haha, thanks for humouring me!