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Comment by Duanemclemore | Hacker News Reader

Even if it has to go through extensive vetting on the theory side, the ability of these models to improve the starting points for the harder process is very strong. For example, in daylight modeling - and this is 2-3 years ago mind you - it has been found that "AI" is perfect for getting 99% closer to the actual luminance in something like 01% the computation. So that even if you feed those "precalculated" models into the traditional raytracers, the improvement to the first guess is well, well worth it.

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I don't really think there's an analogy between radiosity simulations and drug discovery. Drug discovery will probably remain fairly ad-hoc and stochastic for some time.

That's fair. I was merely talking about being able to make better "first guesses." Nowhere near the predictability of a much simpler phenomenon such as radiance mapping, of course.

And as the article says, >"There were a lot of models that we didn’t even try because we thought they were so bad,...”

To me the analogy is that generic AI techniques with minimal problem domain specific adaptations is providing huge boosts in efficiency on a wide variety of applications. It’s like the steam engine causing mechanical work to become vastly more efficient. AI in many ways is doing the same thing to intellectual work.

The long-anticipated "mental gym" industry! Where people pay to exercise their atrophied mental muscles the same way they exercise their barely-needed physical muscles now.

With all the associated bullshit and snake oil and romanticizing of the "good old natty days" too, of course.

Big $$$ industry, at least until our brave future does away with voluntary reproduction altogether, being the reason people bother to exercise in the first place.

What are all video games if not mental gyms?

mental cake and junk food

I don't think this analogy works. You spend energy (just a different kind) playing games.

Not everybody is playing factorio or caves of qud. A lot of people are doing color match and fetch quests. It's about as mentally engaging as walking.

you say this as if walking didn’t have plenty of cognitive benefits

I meant the cognitive load of ambulation itself. Not the self reflection time or exercise.

I do hope people choose a nice walk over color match games.

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