David Sendor

How do we speed up scientific discovery?

I’ve spent twenty years using data and AI to make complicated processes work better, mostly in large companies. In a human world, AI speeds up the work and the bottleneck moves down the chain. Now I’m looking at where AI will speed up fundamental science and where it won’t, mainly in physics and astronomy.

  1. Read the field (AI reaches this today)
  2. Model it (AI reaches this today)
  3. Write the proposal (AI reaches this today)
  4. Get people to agree (where the work waits)
  5. Build it (AI does not reach this yet)
  6. Measure against nature (AI does not reach this yet)
EssayWhere AI speeds science up, and what’s holding the rest backThe bottleneck is rarely the AI. Three guesses at where it moves instead: getting people to agree, physical construction, and fields with nothing to measure against.Read the essay Critical pathJames Webb: 33 years from first idea to first lightThe telescope’s critical path from the Gap Map analysis, drawn to scale: eight steps from 1989 to 2022, and the three that AI reaches today.See the path AnalysisThe Gap Map, with critical pathsAn additive layer on Convergent Research’s Fundamental Development Gap Map. Each of its 103 gaps gets a label for what stands in the way and whether AI reaches it, and some are broken into the steps the work runs through, starting with James Webb and research publishing.Open the analysis

How is AI helping your field, and where is it not helping?

Tell me: david@sendorai.com