Can LLMs Achieve Scientific Leaps?
burny_tech · x · 2026-07-10
The post paraphrases Adam Brown's view: general relativity is one of humanity's greatest leaps, but LLMs are essentially "interpolators," even if the abstraction level of their interpolation continues to rise.
The cited post further proposes a thought experiment: if all papers, data, and equations from around 1905 were fed into an LLM, it still couldn't "think outside the box" to invent general relativity, because discovery is more than just induction and deduction—it requires the crucial step of creating a new conceptual framework.
Related event: Opinions Suggest LLMs Lack Capacity for Scientific Leaps(3 posts)→
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