Noah Smith: AI is ending science's decline and ushering in a golden age of discovery
QuintinPope5 · x · 2026-10-29
Economist Noah Smith argues a golden age of science is coming, in a widely shared essay:
- The prior pessimism: Recent years produced serious papers like "Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?" and "Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive," plus John Horgan's 1996 book The End of Science — the idea that low-hanging insights are mined out and ever more brains yield ever less progress.
- AI changes the premise: AI can do what groups of human researchers can't. Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark gathered hopeful data points in an IMF lecture: "Pick different parts of science and you see the same pattern — progress is accelerating, and it started accelerating in the last two years."
- Caveat: It's far too early to tell how much AI will speed up total factor productivity, but the signs of a science speedup are already visible.
More from AGI Musings
- Dileep George: compute is the helium of the AI era — scaling isn't enough — mjdramstead · 2026-10-29
- People without "auto-compacting memory" struggle, says founder in LLM analogy thread — StewartalsopIII · 2026-10-29
- Prediction: in 2-3 years coding models may generate images, video and music from first principles — VraserX · 2026-10-29
- Bindu Reddy fires back at Jon Stewart: AI isn't circular deals, it has transformed white-collar work — bindureddy · 2026-10-29
- Finance Hasn't Had Its "Claude Code Moment" Yet — But It's Coming — jarrodwatts · 2026-10-29
- Being Understood Is a Hold Someone Pays For: Why Cheap AI Listeners Only Echo Your Views — AnnaCiaunica · 2026-10-29