Age of Augmented Invention

I expect we’ll shortly see the emergence of Quantitative Discovery studies.

The Philosopher’s Stone of the inventive world is a machine that can independently invent useful technologies for us.

I suspect that we are still quite a ways from this, despite the early promise of GPT-X, AlphaFold and friends. A credible concrete step towards this philosopher’s stone would to begin not with new inventions from AI, but rather with attempts to nudge AIs into independently re-discovering existing knowledge.

This would catapult us toward new, exceedingly actionable knowledge on how invention and innovation really happens. And how we may best approach it.

The parallel here is how simulation has helped us to better understand animal behaviour, disease, and the brain.

I expect it is still too early for humans to take the backseat to inventive AIs.

Instead, we are entering an Age of Augmented Invention.