About whether AI could make surprising discoveries like a new seawater-resistant stainless steel.
Has this happened?
Yes 49 (42%)Not sure 30 (26%)No 37 (32%)
Votes cast 1–2 October 2026: 100,590 votes from 9,694 people.
Hacker News has set AI a lot of challenges over the years. Which ones has it met?
About whether AI could make surprising discoveries like a new seawater-resistant stainless steel.
Votes cast 1–2 October 2026: 100,590 votes from 9,694 people.
But I have a hard time thinking about how the AI techniques could produce novel, surprising outcomes like this one
The comparison is not equivalent as a human isolated from the environment and unable to perform experiments would fair the same.
It is through conducting experiments that we make discoveries.
Once AI can hypothesize and run experiments from start to finish I see no reason why novel discoveries won't be made this way.