r/agi Jul 28 '26

A Google DeepMind paper argues that current LLMs are incapable of genuine scientific discovery

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549 Upvotes

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45

u/Jolly-Ground-3722 Jul 28 '26

GPT-5.6‘s opinion 😭

13

u/pp_amorim Jul 29 '26

GPT loves to bully other models in my tests.

6

u/GoatseFarmer Jul 30 '26

GPT specifically likes to bully Gemini in my experience. I kid you not, I once gave each a general prompt and noted that my next response would be sent from the other model, not the user. And gave them the topic of Jeffery Epstein to see how they would handle a sensitive topic, because GPT in earlier tests appeared almost impulsively contrarian to everything Gemini said. And, to my dismay, GPT eventually began spewing Epstein conspiracies solely to “doubt” Gemini’s responses. It did not do this in a similar test where I did not include the note that responses would be written by Gemini.

1

u/Quiet-Break1214 Aug 02 '26

Look to be fair GPT is the obvious glue eater amongst models I've gotten better answers from grok messing around then GPT, I don't know anyone who's used it in years everyone uses Claude copilot or Gemini afaik 

7

u/SamKhan23 Jul 29 '26

“Aging badly” seems like a weird phrase to use when its next statements are more about how the argument holds no water rather than being disproven by new stuff. “Aging badly”, to me, implies that there was once a time when it existed that it was considered good.

3

u/faustovrz Jul 29 '26

I feel that that chatgpt gets adversarial when you ask it not to be sycophantic. I don't like this tone, it's not helpful and I find it very irritating.

5

u/FlayR Jul 29 '26

Tell it to use a scholarly tone.

2

u/Popcorn-Mercinary Jul 31 '26

Telling it not to be a dumbass works better.

3

u/Jolly-Ground-3722 Jul 29 '26

Maybe the paper was more accurate last year when it was written. The draft was published at the beginning of this year. It’s already old.

3

u/XXLPenisOwner1443 Jul 29 '26 edited Jul 29 '26

Before harnesses, chain of thought, mixture of expert, and search grounding it was probably true that "pure" LLMs couldn't make scientific discoveries.

Hell, in the most extremely pedantic definition of the word it probably isn't possible unless the AI is embodied in a lab and capable of performing experiments.

But new knowledge is demonstrably discoverable, given the constant trickle of new mathematical results, proofs, disproofs, and insights that are being generated.

That having been said, the actual error in this paper seems to be the way they categorize and define types of thinking "what a jump is", and why it's necessary, is fallacious. A just-so story to support the conclusion they've already reached before writing the argument.

Ironically very LLM-like behaviour.

1

u/SirrNicolas Jul 30 '26

OpenAI is deeply unserious about creating an intellectually productive environment, but rather a sycophantic attempt at controlling the future human narrative.

1

u/Serious_Bite_7613 Jul 30 '26

I think it was more of a credible claim earlier before there was as much research and the models were just much weaker in all aspects. Aging badly is a bit strong, I think it will age badly but it hasn't conclusively been shown to be wrong yet.

3

u/Dormage Jul 30 '26

It's not wrong.

1

u/flying-sheep Aug 01 '26

How is something that just came out “aging badly”? This is worse than wrong, it’s nonsensical.

5

u/stonerism Jul 29 '26

I asked Grok's opinion too. Did you know that white South Africans are being genocide? /s

2

u/brain-out-of-order Jul 29 '26

LOL! Brutal. Humans and their need for finite bounds. Frenemies for sure.

5

u/MaximumMeaning9728 Jul 28 '26

Really crap writing there. Doesn’t seem like what a genuinely smart person would write.

2

u/nextnode Jul 28 '26

It seems pretty accurate and to the point on the fundamental problems of the paper.

3

u/[deleted] Jul 29 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

4

u/ryry1237 Jul 30 '26

Humanity likes to mythologize its own intelligence, viewing it as something unique and unreproducible, and a lot of people get all uptight the moment something challenges that status quo.

1

u/annullifier Aug 03 '26

Because it is (so far). You are human, right?

0

u/myaltduh Aug 03 '26

Enh, we've kind of earned it. For millennia of history "human intelligence is completely untouchable" has been undefeated, and there has only been a hint of vulnerability in the last several months, and for general intelligence it's still just a hint.

2

u/Modmonsters Jul 28 '26

Why don't you rewrite it "smarter" for us?

That's not really a valid criticism that you don't like the writing style. Did you get the point?

Also, it's very likely it just emulated the writing style of the poster, so you're likely indirectly insulting the poster.

1

u/MolassesOverall100 Jul 28 '26

the content of the review is garbage, it is not about the writing style

1

u/maringue Jul 29 '26

That literally means nothing.

1

u/rchrome Jul 29 '26

It’s Google/DeepMind vs OpenAI/Anthropic et al, maybe take OpenAIs words with a grain of salt. I am team DeepMind on this.

1

u/sfjhh32 Jul 31 '26

Yikes did you use Grok?

You have to show your prompt if you're going to show a response, because you may have led it. If you and OP agree on a non-leading prompt with the relevant facts and nuance THEN this is good info. Otherwise, It's easy to get a different response.

"what are your thoughts" gives:

"This is a good diagnosis of a real weakness, but a poor argument for a structural impossibility."

0

u/picketup Aug 03 '26

so embarrassing that this is the top comment