Invention of the Method of Invention

A general purpose technology in itself is not enough to transform societies. Equally important are the methods of invention that must be invented in order to harness the technology.

With steam engines it was tinkering. Performance of engines improved massively over time as people learned to tinker them here and there.

With electricity the method was R&D lab and more science oriented methods in improving various application that electricity enabled.

With microchips and internet protocols the technology itself is in a way a method of invention, it can process and produce information and share it at an instant globally.

With AI the method of invention might be the transformation of scientific method itself. Not only in natural sciences, but in humanities and social sciences. This can be massively beneficial to our understanding of ourselves and our societies.

Here’s a great example of this.

”Automated Social Science: Language Models as Scientist and Subjects.

We present an approach for automatically generating and testing, in silico, social scientific hypotheses.”