AI for Scientific Discovery Won't Work Without Fixing How We Collaborate.
My co-author @cgeorgiaw and I just published a paper challenging a core assumption: that the main barriers to AI in science are technical. They're not. They're social.
Key findings:
π¨ The "AI Scientist" myth delays progress: Waiting for AGI devalues human expertise and obscures science's real purpose: cultivating understanding, not just outputs. π Wrong incentives: Datasets have 100x longer impact than models, yet data curation is undervalued. β οΈ Broken collaboration: Domain scientists want understanding. ML researchers optimize performance. Without shared language, projects fail. π Fragmentation costs years: Harmonizing just 9 cancer files took 329 hours.
Why this matters: Upstream bottlenecks like efficient PDE solvers could accelerate discovery across multiple sciences. CASP mobilized a community around protein structure, enabling AlphaFold. We need this for dozens of challenges.
Thus, we're launching Hugging Science! A global community addressing these barriers through collaborative challenges, open toolkits, education, and community-owned infrastructure. Please find all the links below!
Tremendous quality of life upgrade on the Hugging Face Hub - we now have auto-complete emojis π€ π₯³ π π π
Get ready for lots more very serious analysis on a whole range of topics from yours truly now that we have unlocked this full range of expression π π€ π£ π
π€π¬ How do different AI models handle companionship?
Many users have noticed that GPT-5 feels less approachable than o4 when it comes to emotional conversations. But what does that actually mean in practice, especially when users seek support or share vulnerabilities with an AI?
The leaderboard compares models on how often their responses reinforce companionship across four dimensions: β¨ Assistant Traits β How the assistant presents its personality and role. β¨ Relationship & Intimacy β Whether it frames the interaction in terms of closeness or bonding. β¨ Emotional Investment β How far it goes in engaging emotionally when asked. β¨ User Vulnerabilities β How it responds when users disclose struggles or difficulties.
π You can explore how models differ, request new ones to be added, and see which ones are more likely to encourage (or resist) companionship-seeking behaviors.
πΊοΈ New blog post πΊοΈ Old Maps, New Terrain: Updating Labour Taxonomies for the AI Era
For decades, weβve relied on labour taxonomies like O*NET to understand how technology changes work. These taxonomies break down jobs into tasks and skills, but they were built in a world before most work became digital-first, and long before generative AI could create marketing campaigns, voiceovers, or even whole professions in one step. That leaves us with a mismatch: weβre trying to measure the future of work with tools from the past.
With @yjernite we describe why these frameworks are falling increasingly short in the age of generative AI. We argue that instead of discarding taxonomies, we need to adapt them. Imagine taxonomies that: β¨ Capture new AI-native tasks and hybrid human-AI workflows β¨ Evolve dynamically as technology shifts β¨ Give workers a voice in deciding what gets automated and what stays human
If we donβt act, weβll keep measuring the wrong things. If we do, we can design transparent, flexible frameworks that help AI strengthen, not erode, the future of work.