While watching the interview with Avi Loeb, I was drawn to his discussion of the lack of creativity and imagination computers have, resulting in reduced efficiency of discovery. In a world, where machine learning is a common topic of conversation for its immense power in innovation, it’s interesting to hear about its drawbacks. Often times, I hear about issues of bias within AI, but creativity was a new idea to me. I certainly see the importance of being able to “think outside the box” and not assume that the future will be the same as the past when making discoveries.
Furthermore, Avi Loeb mentions the importance of professors and scientists of explaining their scientific processes even if they are wrong or uncertain in order to encourage the public to participate in scientific dialogues. If I had conducted the interview, I would have asked how he would tackle this challenge. As Avi Loeb mentioned, there is the mentality that work shared with the public should be polished. Do there need to be changes in how funding and prizes are distributed? How can we ensure that uncertain work is properly labeled so that misunderstandings do not arise among the public?
Link: https://www.labxchange.org/library/items/lb:HarvardX:c1543a73:lx_simulation:1