Fickler was one of the more than 100 guinea pigs for Krenn’s survey of AI-generated research ideas. When the survey results arrived, most of the ideas were given a 1 on a scale of 1 to 5. But about a quarter were rated a 4 or 5 — that is, “interesting” or “very interesting.” To Krenn, 25% is a pretty good starting point. “I’m not sure I can produce... See more

High-achieving scientists — those who had already patented the most materials — came up with new ideas even faster, with the top decile improving their output by 81%, likely because they had the intuition to toss aside the AI’s worst ideas and test only the good ones.