Scientific computing in the age of agentic AI

hbnfg

Coordinated with the ACM announcement?

vouaobrasil

When I was in school, one of my professors told me something like "the age of the small research project is over. Now it's becoming a lot more like industry where the large-scale research plan is king". Using AI and large-scale computing in general is a continuation of that, even in abstract fields like math. Have to admit, while it might be impressive, I found this new paradigm to be not much fun. Some find allure in it because it gives some immediately impressive results or finds some low-hanging fruit that wasn't there before. But I get the feeling that we're becoming smaller and smaller irrelevant cogs in a machine where the individual is becoming more replaceable every day. Proponents of high-tech utopias where we are 100% safe and all diseases are solved and we have endless surplus no doubt support this sort of future. But I think it's basically equivalent of living like zoo animals - anhorrent and not a future worth working towards. So while there can be no doubt that new science will be done with these techniques, I for one have no enthusiasm about whatever will be discovered, unless of course AI goes haywire and deletes itself.

krupan

Can we just stop posting press releases to HN?