Thread

1. evolarjun · 1790192734 · focus · HN ↗

   It is odd (or maybe not) that they decided to publish a marketing whitepaper rather than a more traditional journal submission + preprint. The work does appear to be sufficient for a publication, though there's a good chance a reviewer will rip into them for some of the assertions they make, but given the topic I'm sure the paper will be accepted regardless.

   The market for entry-level programmers has already declined, but at least they were somewhat in demand and made reasonable salaries. Now what happens to post-docs who already make almost nothing and often get treated like crap?

   1. stets · 1790193202 · focus · HN ↗

      Medical advances are more important than post docs

      1. papyrus9244 · 1790193601 · focus · HN ↗

         Absolutely. But without post docs, it won't be long before we are unable to understand what the LLMs are suggesting.

         1. sterlind · 1790198534 · focus · HN ↗

            many drugs were discovered, evaluated and approved without understanding at all how they worked.

            iirc back in the day chemists synthesized a whole bunch of random compounds, observed their effects (in mice etc., or even the chemists tasting them!) then did clinical trials to measure safety and efficacy.

            high-throughput screening of chemical libraries on in vitro assays is the modern version of this. "rational" drug design, which uses understanding of mechanisms to design chemical structures for a specific purpose, largely failed back in the '80s.

            1. suddenlybananas · 1790200870 · focus · HN ↗

               Well I guess who gives a shit about knowledge

               1. mlazos · 1790201586 · focus · HN ↗

                  Ive been thinking about this a a lot, like now if LLMs can just try a bunch of things, you can just try them all now. Are there some applications where we can just brute force and test at scale and no longer need to understand? Where understanding is now in essence that it “works” and passes our acceptance tests.

                  1. suddenlybananas · 1790201689 · focus · HN ↗

                     I give a shit about knowledge! I think it's good entirely for its own sake.

                     1. orangecat · 1790202281 · focus · HN ↗

                        I agree! I'm also not going to turn down an Alzheimer's vaccine that's been demonstrated to be safe and effective even if we don't know exactly how it works. (And if you think that's a contrived fantasy, check out the shingles vaccine).

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