{"id":9221,"date":"2025-07-19T23:46:18","date_gmt":"2025-07-19T23:46:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/9221\/"},"modified":"2025-07-19T23:46:18","modified_gmt":"2025-07-19T23:46:18","slug":"billionaires-convince-themselves-ai-chatbots-are-close-to-making-new-scientific-discoveries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/9221\/","title":{"rendered":"Billionaires Convince Themselves AI Chatbots Are Close to Making New Scientific Discoveries"},"content":{"rendered":"

Generative artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Grok have exploded in popularity as AI becomes mainstream. These tools don\u2019t have the ability to make new scientific discoveries on their own, but billionaires are convinced that AI is on the cusp of doing just that. And the latest episode of the All-In podcast<\/a> helps explain why these guys think AI is extremely close to revolutionizing scientific knowledge.<\/p>\n

Travis Kalanick, the founder of Uber who no longer works at the company, appeared on All-In to talk with hosts Jason Calacanis and Chamath Palihapitiya about the future of technology. When the topic turned to AI, Kalanick discussed how he uses xAI\u2019s Grok, which went haywire last week<\/a>, praising Adolf Hitler and advocating for a second Holocaust against Jews.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll go down this thread with [Chat]GPT or Grok and I\u2019ll start to get to the edge of what\u2019s known in quantum physics and then I\u2019m doing the equivalent of vibe coding, except it\u2019s vibe physics,\u201d Kalanick explained<\/a>. \u201cAnd we\u2019re approaching what\u2019s known. And I\u2019m trying to poke and see if there\u2019s breakthroughs to be had. And I\u2019ve gotten pretty damn close to some interesting breakthroughs just doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The guys on the podcast only briefly addressed Grok\u2019s failures without getting into specifics about the MechaHitler debacle, and none of that stopped Kalanick from talking like Grok was this revolutionary tool that was so close to making scientific discoveries in revolutionary ways.<\/p>\n

\u201cI pinged Elon on at some point. I\u2019m just like, dude, if I\u2019m doing this and I\u2019m super amateur hour physics enthusiast, like what about all those PhD students and postdocs that are super legit using this tool?\u201d Kalanick said.<\/p>\n

Kalanick suggested that what made this even more incredible was that he was using an earlier version of Grok before Grok 4 was released on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd this is pre-Grok 4. Now with Grok 4, like, there\u2019s a lot of mistakes I was seeing Grok make that then I would correct, and we would talk about it. Grok 4 could be this place where breakthroughs are actually happening, new breakthroughs,\u201d Kalanick said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Calacanis asked Kalanick the obvious question of whether Grok was actually on the verge of a scientific breakthrough. Because anyone who actually understands large language models knows that it can\u2019t achieve new ways of thinking. It\u2019s just putting together words in the most statistically likely way, forming connections that may sound like a well-thought-out argument but are actually not a form of true \u201cintelligence\u201d as humans would define it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs your perception that the LLMs are actually starting to get to the reasoning level, that they\u2019ll come up with a novel concept theory and have that breakthrough? Or that we\u2019re kind of reading into it and it\u2019s just trying random stuff at the margins?\u201d Calacanis asked.<\/p>\n

Kalanick said<\/a> that he hasn\u2019t used Grok 4 because he was having technical difficulties accessing it, suggesting that perhaps a later version of Grok might be capable of such a thing. But he admitted the AI couldn\u2019t yet come up with new discoveries.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, it cannot come up with the new idea. These things are so wedded to what is known. And they\u2019re so like, even when I come up with a new idea, I have to really, it\u2019s like pulling a donkey. You see, you\u2019re pulling it because it doesn\u2019t want to break conventional wisdom. It\u2019s like really adhering to conventional wisdom. You\u2019re pulling it out and then eventually goes, oh, shit, you got something,\u201d Kalanick said.<\/p>\n

Kalanick emphasized that \u201cyou have to double and triple check to make sure that you really got something,\u201d making clear he understood that AI chatbots just make things up much of the time. But he still seemed convinced that the thing holding back Grok was \u201cconventional wisdom\u201d rather than the natural limitations of the tech.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Palihapitiya went a step further than Kalanick, insisting that synthetic data could train new AI models.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen these models are fully divorced from having to learn on the known world and instead can just learn synthetically, then everything gets flipped upside down to what is the best hypothesis you have or what is the best question? You could just give it some problem and it would just figure it out,\u201d said Palihapitiya.<\/p>\n

Musk revealed a similar line of thinking recently when he suggested \u201cgeneral artificial intelligence\u201d was close because he had asked Grok \u201cabout materials science that are not in any books or on the Internet.\u201d The idea, of course, is that Musk had hit the limits of known science rather than the limit of his scientific understanding. The billionaire really seems convinced that Grok was working on something new.<\/p>\n

That was how I felt when asking Grok 4 questions about materials science that are not in any books or on the Internet https:\/\/t.co\/2wEP3mtD2j<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 10, 2025<\/a><\/p>\n

These guys are hyping up the idea of general artificial intelligence (AGI), which doesn\u2019t even have an exact definition. But it\u2019s far from the only term getting tossed around right now. AI folks also drop words like \u201csuperintelligence\u201d without defining what that means, but it sure keeps the investors intrigued.<\/p>\n

These AI chatbots are pulling off a magic trick. They can often seem like they\u2019re \u201cthinking\u201d or applying rational thought to a given answer, but they work by spitting out the word that\u2019s most likely to be next in a sentence, not by actually applying critical reasoning. There\u2019s a reason that people who understand AI the best are the least excited about using it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Apple has gotten a lot of shit for not committing to AI in a more forceful way, something the All-In guys talked about, but the company understands perhaps better than most that there are limitations to this tech. In fact, Apple released a paper last month<\/a> that shows how Large Reasoning Models (LRMs) struggle, facing \u201ca complete accuracy collapse beyond certain complexities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Apple\u2019s paper won\u2019t dampen the hype, of course. Just about every other major tech company is pushing hard into AI agents and investing billions of dollars into data centers. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced<\/a> Monday that his company was building enormous new data centers to work on superintelligence.<\/p>\n

\u201cMeta Superintelligence Labs will have industry-leading levels of compute and by far the greatest compute per researcher,\u201d Zuck wrote. \u201cI\u2019m looking forward to working with the top researchers to advance the frontier!\u201d<\/p>\n