I don’t understand what the model actually did here or how it was verified, and I feel like that’s a general problem with all these “AI did breakthrough science” posts. I understand that I’m not an expert in these fields so there’s only so much I can pick up from a blog post about it, but these posts are basically always just “trust us, it did the thing.” I mean surely you could easily share the conversation trace and any artifacts/code it produced so peers in the field can verify the work.
> These scattering amplitude formulas are hard to compute, so hard that physicists almost always use approximations. They do partial calculations, cut off at a specific number of “loops,” a measure of how complicated interactions between particles are allowed to get. The more “loops” they include in their calculations, the closer they get to the real answer, and the harder, computationally, the calculation is to do.
I don’t even understand what type of solution we’re describing here, is it a formula? A program? A Lean proof?
Would you understand it if it had been done the old-fashioned way? I think the problem is the part where you (and I) are not an expert in the field. It's extremely rare for the solution to an unsolved problem like this to be understandable to someone outside the field.
I don’t think it would have been released as a blog post with no details if it was done the old fashioned way. My point is that there isn’t even enough information for an intelligent person to glean anything from this besides for “AI did physics”. If there was a paper I could at least answer the question I was wondering about, “what form is the solution in?” It’s about transparency and the lack of it in all these AI company posts.
Nothing is stopping you from clicking through to the solution and reading it. It goes way over my head, of course. I’m not sure what a non-expert could get out of this story besides “AI did physics.”
an0malous · · focus · HN ↗
> These scattering amplitude formulas are hard to compute, so hard that physicists almost always use approximations. They do partial calculations, cut off at a specific number of “loops,” a measure of how complicated interactions between particles are allowed to get. The more “loops” they include in their calculations, the closer they get to the real answer, and the harder, computationally, the calculation is to do.
I don’t even understand what type of solution we’re describing here, is it a formula? A program? A Lean proof?
wat10000 · · focus · HN ↗
an0malous · · focus · HN ↗
wat10000 · · focus · HN ↗