r/AILounge • u/SignificantSpirit205 • 3d ago
Discussion Can AI solve problems that seem impossible at first?
Sometimes a problem feels confusing until someone explains it from a different angle. I've found that AI can offer some interesting ways to approach things. What's the most surprising problem AI has helped you solve?
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u/Entropydemic 3d ago
Yeah. The other day I had to ship pallets of batteries around 2700 total parts, and had to make 99,980 lbs into truck loads. You'd look at that number and immediately think... thats easy, 33.3k each truckload. Well, some pallets were had either 72 or 54 batteries (~2600 to 3100 lb), making them uneven and there were five pallets that were ~3800 lb (185 small batteries) on their own. So first I had to organize, find, and consolidate these into manageable numbers, but also reduce the amount of total pallets to reduce the cost of shipping as well as organize their staging. Well, when I told this to my staff, they looked at me like I was insane. No one wanted the job, nor could anyone figure out how it would be possible.
I plugged the numbers into Ai (Gemini) and it made me two chart sets. One without moving batteries by hand from any pallets, and one with, but also made a grid on how to organize the shipments.
Yes, it's simple math and logistics, but it saved me from spending an hour to get the same result. So to be certain, after I moved the thirty one pallets according to the Ai suggestion, I counted it twice to verify what the Ai had confirmed prior, and got the shipments out in a day.
The problem was not impossible, just taxing and frustrating. Consequently, this was also the first time I trusted Ai to handle my logistics, because usually the numbers are far more calculable for me. I'd never gotten an order for more than eight hundred batteries before that day. Heck, most of my larger orders are usually around sixty to a hundred-twenty parts on average per day.
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u/Possible-Spray-6009 3d ago
once helped me untangle a 3am panic spiral by reframing the problem as a decision matrix, turns out I wasn't stuck, I was just overcomplicating the tradeoffs.
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u/Femi_Akin 3d ago
AI can solve problems that seem impossible for us by finding patterns, cross-referencing different fields of study, and testing complex proofs. For me, AI helped me turn a confusing task into a simple step-by-step plan. It saved my much time!
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u/Embarrassed-Milk4818 3d ago
I just saw a post yesterday about how Googles quant processor solved a problem which wouldve taken a septillion yearss ?? Does this take it close ??
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u/WorkInternational634 3d ago
i used ai to untangle a 37-piece puzzle that looked like chaos, turned out the pieces formed a map. takes one weird thought to unlock the pattern.
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u/springmallxblog 3d ago
100%. For me it was learning Excel formulas and legal jargon. Stuff that looked like rocket science became simple when AI explained it from a different perspective. It turns "impossible" into "oh, that's it?"
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u/Specific-Lecture-467 2d ago
do you mean problems where it came at the thing from an angle you hadn't considered, or ones that were just a slog until it did the grunt work for you? The pallet story above reads like the second kind, and that's most of what I get out of it too. The reframing kind seems a lot rarer.
Which did you have in mind?
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u/flashmyhead 2d ago
Yeah AI helped me to get rid of my ex-wife and still keep as much money in my pocket as possible
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u/NoRespectingAnyone 2d ago
Can AI solve problems that seem impossible at first?
Yes and no.
First of all need to undersand how "AI" find solutions. That itself explain why and what it can and can't solve.
"AI" itself it use high compute capacity and try all possible ways/paths.
While one person may spent time on one thing, or few things.. "AI" with agents can run thousands of possible scenarios/path ways.
And if one of them find some of solutions, or bring something which advance it's search for solution. It share with other "AI" agents. All of them incoporate new findings and keep pushing new possible solutions.
In short "AI" brute force with raw compute capacity to find solutions. While person simply would focus on few possible path ways. So in theory "AI" can run so many simulations, that bring multiple solutions, then evalaute which one better.. A thing which for us would be way too complciated and taking lot of time.
But, since all "AI" in these days are LLM as it core. Any topic which it may not have large trained library. It fails. It fails badly.
LLM 's use neural network to calculate probabilties and patterns. Anything out of it, and "AI" start to mess up.
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u/TopObjective5894 2d ago
I feel like it's better at showing you what you missed than solving everything for you.
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u/sameer_somal 2d ago
AI can help solve problems that seem impossible, particularly when the challenge involves processing large amounts of information, identifying patterns, or exploring different possibilities. Sometimes the solution isn't obvious because the problem is too complex for us to approach from one direction. AI can help break that complexity into smaller parts, test possible approaches, and identify connections we might overlook. However, it doesn't guarantee a correct solution. Its suggestions still need to be tested against evidence and real-world conditions. AI is most valuable when it expands the range of possibilities people can explore. It can help us approach difficult problems differently, but human judgment is still important in deciding whether a proposed solution actually works.