Can A.I. Do Science?
The short answer is no. LLMs present existing known data professionally. Science, is more about dealing with unknowns to advance some field or human knowledge, is not what LLM's do.
A.I. is telling humans what they already know and not the other way around. This is fantastic but where is the intersection?
Science, the scientific method and other methods of obtaining truth is to observe, document observations, theorize and hypothesize. At some argument and counterargument, one theory becomes highly probable.
Implementing the scientific method and similar reasoning method in an A.I. could work. The hypothesis validates against the experimental result, perhaps in a machine learning model. Start with a question, hypothesis generation, experimentation, observation, results, critical analysis and more. After much work generate a comprehensive paper with the findings and submit it.
Experimental design to prove or disprove a hypothesis could be of use, that is to design the experiment that answer the question.
Making a robot and sending it off into the world to do science, do the experiments, and while extremely useful could be too slow and cost prohibitive, for example we could have hundreds of robots hand doing the lab work, testing thousands of possible combinations at best, while A.I. is about acceleration and so possibly a mirror universe of our own universe for the A.I. to simulate hundreds of thousands of experiments and explore could be the solution.
The ultimate experiments are A.I. building the simulation so that inconsistencies within the mirror world and our world are rectified. They could all look like Brian Cox.
Importantly, getting an A.I. to be a scientist is about being contrary until sufficient evidence and not obeying the status quo. You cannot have a scientist A.I. defend the existance of black holes for instance because it fits a perception of truth or fact that humans have.
Critical Thinking and Skepticism: A.I. currently lacks the inherent skepticism and critical thinking skills necessary for robust scientific inquiry. It instead blindly enforces the thinking of its masters. What is, and what we think is, should always be challenged with sufficient presentation of evidence and it should never be about who said it pro and con.
The realm of scientific discovery primarily is about uncovering the unknown.
Cure aging with A.I.
Some prompts to get A.I. into a "very scientific state":