Joanna Bryson, blatheringI've been to a lot of google offices, and a couple google berlin parties, but I've never seen security like today for their AI launch. There's a #tag – #techGoogle which seems odd. I wasn't invited for the press event earlier, (the youtuber next to me was), but the panel AI Forum The Future of Science in the Age of AI (and a party later.) (edit: actually #tachGoogle )
Unexpectedly it's in English. TIL #berlin's googlers who were especially being welcomed (!!) are called "boogelers." The point of the kick off is this is "the" Google AI centre (?) So discussing the future of AI "with many different stakeholders." Again they repeatedly thank the googlers who made this all possible. Panelists are the greatest minds in AI, seriously (they say). Alena Buyx, Fabian Theis, Yossi Matias, Jakob Uszkoreit two more I can't see the names of. Lara St? BothurKlaus Robert?
So science used to be about understanding things then proving them, now we just get answers. Has science changed? JU – 20C was a weird exception with rich theories, alchemy is normal science (sounds like Zuckerberg on privacy, which I've debunked elsewhere.) Getting back to a place where concrete engineering leads before full understanding. YM: this is a golden age of research. Acceleration of sci discovery from AI agents, which help create, validate, rank hypothesese.
Every teenager can have their own virtual lab (still YM) need to think through how to cope with this, need to train next generation to operate in a new domain than we used to. Today is already over. Lara: syntehtic data is so cool but you need multiple sets of it. quantum! YM I think still: we already see this working in maths, health ai, products in our daily lives. It's astonishing that we are still nascent in this. Lara to FT: are scientists no longer discoverer but only interepreters?
FT answers: hey, when were we ever discovering. The last 50 years we were not as disruptive and stuff as before, we were already in trouble. He hated biology because it was too much random stuff to learn. But now kids are interested because they can use AI tools. Modern science happens in teams anyway. Quotes Hinton, misattributes radiology from 9 years ago to pathology to 15 years ago but gets the bottom line: that Hinto was so wrong. Klaus-Robert?: AI is just a tool.
KR?: Fields without data e.g. quantum you need to make the AI use all the knowledge of physics to deal with less data, so new universal language but still very dfferent in different domains. (Dying to hear what my friend AB says...ah she's on) AB: Not just an ethicist but a doctor, no one knew what asprin was but we kept using it, it's so common in medical science it has a Latin name, try random stuff. Also German, I don't get either. She comes teh exact other side.
J. Nathan Matias 🦣@j2bryson wow, so advocating for a model of science without human understanding?
@natematias or at least understanding as a separate possibly negligibly related process.
@j2bryson I think we are headed for a new two cultures moment
@j2bryson I don't necessarily buy CP Snow's argument in the 1950s- he had serious shortcomings in his understanding of education and culture, sigh. Similarly, I think people who argue for understanding-free models may not actually mean what their words mean.
But I wonder if there is at least rhetoric about a fundamental divergence to be wrestled with in our times.
