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Alphafold is open and seems fundamentally transformative in the science space. GPT is nice but it’s a smart meme-generator at the moment. I don’t disagree with the impact on G’s bottom line, though.

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Gonna have to disagree about GPT. I’ve been using it as a tutor to learn ML on the side, and it’s literally the best tutor I’ve ever had.

Sure, I agree they are useful. My objection is it’s more in the tool category than science, while Alphafold is both. There isn’t convincing evidence that GPTs are pushing what we know; rather, they make it easier to process/search what we already know. You could hire an ML expert to be your tutor without GPTs and you’d get equal or better tutoring, though at a higher price. You can’t hire people to predict protein folding better than Alphafold. It’s very convenient that GPTs exist and they can provide tons of value, but they’re essentially the next version of mechanical turk or a domain expert you’d hire for contract work except more scalable. The net impact of GPTs may also be higher due to how often we use text, but I’d rather see a society curing disease, etc. than one generating fake books, etc.

I see what you're saying. However, I'd argue that the zero-shot learning capabilities of the latest GPTs, if continually improved upon, could potentially offer a path towards a generalist "scientist" agent, one that could perform its own research and take over R&D for humanity (aka, the singularity). But yes, I absolutely agree that the current gen capabilities of GPTs are nowhere close to this hypothetical situation.

Of course, the models from Alphabet don't really fit this bill either. I do wonder how many "protein folding" style problems there are out there, for these narrow superintelligent AIs to solve.

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