My student Shen Cong and I are starting a business, and we want to build a company that makes scientific exploration fun with AI applications.
As everyone knows, AI is already shaking up the existing research system. In our view, this trend is less about driving humans out of the research field than about overturning the professionalization and closure of research, and thereby giving everyone the chance to take part in it. The pursuit of knowledge is becoming, once again, not a dull, profit-seeking career but a source of pleasure.
Scientists shut away in ivory towers and making a living from publishing papers are facing the impact of AI, but with the help of AI, everyone can be a scientist.
First, by applying AI, we are visualizing science and knowledge and designing a research platform that both interdisciplinary researchers and ordinary people can access, combining playfulness and sociability.
Our art studio has already completed many successful scientific visualization projects, and we are now developing related applications to automate this workflow and launch an interactive platform.
The project is still in its early stage, and friends who are interested are very welcome to join, including those working in AI products, technology, engineering, design, as well as scientific research and communication. We especially hope to meet partners with practical engineering experience, or with entrepreneurial experience and a willingness to build for the long term. We can start by talking about what each of us is doing and what ideas we have about this direction, and then discuss具体 participation methods. If interested, please feel free to contact tianyu.art , and recommendations of suitable friends are also welcome.
What is the purpose of scientific research? Is it to get a stable iron rice bowl at a university and make money to get by? Or is it to develop technology, raise productivity, and in short make money for humanity? If we look only at these utilitarian ends, then AI replacing humans may seem only natural. But what is the original intention of scientific research? It is curiosity and the desire for knowledge; it is our wish to understand this world, to understand the mysteries of the universe and the abundance of life. We will never be able to let AI replace us in understanding.
It is like reading a mystery novel: perhaps there is a stretch of plot we do not understand, and we hope someone will explain it to us, or discuss it with us—the “someone” can be AI; but we would never want to hand the book to AI to read and then have it tell us, “I found the killer.” Perhaps it can solve the mystery faster than all humans, but so what? Would we then stop reading it ourselves?
The various mysteries of the universe, like the ending of a mystery novel, may already have been written long ago, or may already have been read by others or by machines, but we still hope to read them ourselves. Understanding the process of reasoning is the pleasure itself; this is the original intention of scientific inquiry and its most fundamental meaning.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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