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by coldtea 21 days ago
>This technology is going to drive some incredible discoveries in all of STEM.

We could do without them.

4 comments

Maybe you're sitting pretty right now, but try posting this from your deathbed, or that of your kid.

The lack of compassion that people display here is shocking to me.

"Don't automate science, because there are junior scientists could be denied the thrill of specific discoveries."

Cancer patients are not accessories to anyone's self-actualization.

Maybe you're sitting pretty right now, but try posting this from your deathbed, or that of your kid, caused by the "advances"
Tell that to the family of someone who dies a year before one of those discoveries that would have saved their life...
I guess you don't know anyone who has cancer.
I know plenty who have cancer because of STEM "advances". No shortage of STEM conveniences being carcinogenic.

But the argument is always the small percentage that get medical treatment. Never the millions who get sick.

We could probably do without computers too, but that would be idiotic because they speed everything up. There's a good chance that the next pandemic is swatted down by LLM-powered vaccine development much faster than COVID-19 was.

"We could do without them." is not a great take when it comes to people dying prematurely.

In fact, I would bet that this particular technology will lead to climate change solutions eventually. If nothing else, it will drive an energy revolution in either nuclear or solar power. Probably too late to solve the AMOC collapse, but mitigation is still in play through science.

> LLM-powered vaccine development

Good lord!

I hope somebody is documenting all these bombastic LLM-related public statements. They're going to be a neverending source of cringe and laughs for the next 50 years.

(I've heard one C-level dude say with a straight face that LLMs were a "more significant invention than writing".)

You're a Google search away from fact checking me if you want to do that.

I'm a DevOps engineer, not a C suite guy, but I tend to agree with you in general. I think there is a lot of smoke being blown into the hive around this technology but having used it extensively, and having witnessed its progression first hand in engineering, these tools are insanely useful and have made giant leaps forward in just ~4 years.

Don't know if you're a believer in Moore's Law or not, but I don't think your tune is going to take anywhere near 50 years to change. I'd be surprised if it took 5 years.

No offense, but your post reads like LLM psychosis. Mostly because you failed to understand my post at all and rushed in to defend AI's honor. (Why? I don't think AI wants or needs your oaths of loyalty.)
Ah yes, the mark of a cogent argument: the phantom diagnosis.
>No offense

Uh huh..

> Good lord!

>I hope somebody is documenting all these bombastic LLM-related public statements.

---

This has been in use for awhile.

https://academic.oup.com/bib/article/26/3/bbaf263/8158336

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12970898/

How it gets used: https://mlconference.ai/blog/ai-in-vaccine-development/

No, you cannot use LLMs to develop vaccines. Anybody who claims otherwise is lying to you.

Also, you're confusing "AI" and LLMs.

it looks like they have been used at least once to help develop a vaccine. they're not as significant as writing but they do seem to have their uses.

https://theconversation.com/a-man-used-ai-to-help-make-a-can...

>We could probably do without computers too, but that would be idiotic because they speed everything up

That they "speed everything up" would be a great reason to get rid of them or constrain them.