Quick notes from a meeting on research in the age of social networks and AI

Great meeting yesterday with a Boston area researcher, interested in cutting edge research tools like Discourse Graphs, Cosmik and science social media.

The research questions they are looking at are too complex & interdisciplinary to be tackled by any single lab. At the same time there is big potential for citizen science - lots of small experiments that are simple to run.

How many big scientific challenges are not so much scientific but rather *meta-scientific* - the challenge of effectively coordinating large scale distributed research?

I asked what he thought about the potential for AI scientists to crack these challenges. For one, he is more interested in AI augmenting human researchers. And even if it could - “I would want for humans to experience the joy of discovery”

Research as art - eg this post but for science:

Joanna Maciejewska on Twitter / X

You know what the biggest problem with pushing all-things-AI is? Wrong direction.I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.— Joanna Maciejewska (@AuthorJMac) March 29, 2024