Nature: Scientists test whether LLMs trained on historical data can reproduce creative breakthroughs
TZahavy · x · 2026-09-14
Nature reports on a growing research effort probing whether language models trained solely on historical data can reproduce humanity's creative scientific breakthroughs. The question strikes at the core debate over whether LLMs can do real discovery: failure to reproduce past breakthroughs would cast doubt on their ability to predict future ones, while success would suggest scientific creativity can be learned from existing literature.
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