An AI Opinions Chart

You ever read something and suddenly a whole classification scheme lights up in your head? A thread on X from “stringking42069” showed me a combination of opinions I hadn’t seen before. stringking42069 is a pro-string theory commentator with a macho gym bro memer gimmick. He’s openly contemptuous of many physicists who describe themselves as string theorists, arguing that only a smaller number really deserve the name. To be clear, none of that is the new combination. Long-time readers of this blog will remember a frequent commenter with a very similar attitude, if much less tendency to use the word “bro”. The new thing, from my perspective, is how he thinks about AI. As he explains in that thread, he sees AI as great at certain kinds of physics calculations, ones where the methods and goals are mostly known and the challenge is working out the math. He doesn’t expect it to be able to contribute real creativity or judgement, the messy decision-making that physicists use to decide what…