I’d say the scientific understanding happens in step 1, but I think that would be mostly consolidating science that’s already understood. (And some patching up potentially exploitable holes where AI can deduce that “if this is the best theory, the real dynamics must actually be like that instead”. But my intuition is that there aren’t many of these holes, and that unknown physics questions are mostly underdetermined by known data, at least for quite a long way toward the infinite-compute limit of Solomonoff induction, and possibly all the way.)
Engineering understanding would happen in step 2, and I think engineering is more “the generator of large effects on the world,” the place where much-faster-than-human ingenuity is needed, rather than hoping to find new science.
(Although the formalization of the model of scientific reality is important for the overall proposal—to facilitate validating that the engineering actually does what is desired—and building such a formalization would be hard for unaided humans.)
I’d say the scientific understanding happens in step 1, but I think that would be mostly consolidating science that’s already understood. (And some patching up potentially exploitable holes where AI can deduce that “if this is the best theory, the real dynamics must actually be like that instead”. But my intuition is that there aren’t many of these holes, and that unknown physics questions are mostly underdetermined by known data, at least for quite a long way toward the infinite-compute limit of Solomonoff induction, and possibly all the way.)
Engineering understanding would happen in step 2, and I think engineering is more “the generator of large effects on the world,” the place where much-faster-than-human ingenuity is needed, rather than hoping to find new science.
(Although the formalization of the model of scientific reality is important for the overall proposal—to facilitate validating that the engineering actually does what is desired—and building such a formalization would be hard for unaided humans.)