About whether AI's math wins carry over to hard real-world engineering.
Has this happened?
Yes 4 (3%)Not sure 25 (20%)No 95 (77%)
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's math wins carry over to hard real-world engineering.
Votes cast 1–2 October 2026: 100,590 votes from 9,694 people.
My main issue with this timeline is that AI still has trouble transitioning to the real world. It predicts for 2029:
There are swarms of insect-sized drones that can poison human infantry before they are even noticed; flocks of bird-sized drones to hunt the insects; new ICBM interceptors, and new, harder-to-intercept ICBMs. The rest of the world watches the buildup in horror, but it seems to have a momentum of its own.
Does anyone really predict insect drones _in production_ 3 years from now, to the degree that we need bird drones to hunt the insect drones? How the hell are these things powered?
Lean/math/millenienium prizes are "grindable" [0]. Wake me up when AI is making order-of-magnitude improvements in ungrindable real world tasks like batteries, hypersonic engine manufacturing, and stealth/silent motors that you can't hear.
[0]: https://www.dwarkesh.com/p/the-next-paradigm