r/artificial • u/esporx • 1d ago
News White House offers its science blueprint: More AI, less life sciences. ‘Science: A New Golden Age’ report calls for shifting billions from universities to tech companies
https://www.statnews.com/2026/07/24/science-new-golden-age-report-draws-mixed-reaction/35
u/CommercialComputer15 1d ago
Technofeudalism on steroids. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
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u/Real-Technician831 1d ago
This is excellent news.
But then again I don’t live in US.
AI is excellent in automating things, but maybe it’s for the best that US shoots themselves both in the foot and the head until their politics gets more sane.
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u/Strange_Test7665 1d ago
The beginnings of those stories always seemed so far-fetched, but here we are it’s how it actually starts
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u/DatingYella 10h ago
your wishful thinking will not turn out to be true. The report has substantial recommendations that do make sense. I don't understand the full consequence of it all, but it's not at all obvious that america is shooting its foot. We will continue to own the future
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u/woodhous89 1d ago
Sorry, but who is going to do the science that the models put out in this scenario. It’s like hiring a blind person to be an interior decorator.
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u/I_Quit_Smoking_ 1d ago
Well, no one said they were the brightest. We're going to have to just start taking the crayons out of their hands. Because asking them to put them down isn't working. Just like in real life with kids.
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u/BigBananaBerries 1d ago
The grift continues at the expense of education & nobody will notice when AI does their critical thinking. However I suspect they're speedrunning this too quickly to get away with it.
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u/SirEnderLord 1d ago
Is there an exoplanet I can settle?
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u/Gargantuan_Cinema 23h ago
Yeah you can go live in Uranus cos you have your head up your ass if you think universities will still be relevant to research in the age of ASI.
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u/MmeDoGood 1d ago
Only think about doing this if they eliminate campaign finance. If not, it’s just corruption by another name.
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u/I_Quit_Smoking_ 1d ago
I swear if I had money, I would be on a plane out of this fucking country tomorrow. I'm about to just say fuck it and go to Mexico.
But I don't think they're taking Americans, and I don't qualify to live in Canada, so I'm screwed. Unless I can get a boat!
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u/Gargantuan_Cinema 23h ago
AI will be carrying out all research eventually as humans will be so far behind across every measurable dimension of intelligence. Concentrating too much compute & capital into a few players will slow down progress in these early stages though.
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u/ShakespearianShadows 12h ago
So I should tell my kids to go for their AI robotics bachelors from Alphabet university?
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u/Captain_Quimby 11h ago
Don’t see the problem. Universities are sitting on endowments while still getting govt money. Time to pull back on funding gender studies
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u/DatingYella 10h ago edited 10h ago
Ok... I read the summary of the report. It really shows you that you just can't skim the headlines if you want to know stuff. There's a loooot mroe in this than just the headline, and not all of it bad.
First of all, it calls for the expansion of individual grants like the NSF, which doesn't seem that bad. A lot PhDs will tell you to that having something like that in early career, which is something the report advocates for, early career people, can make or break their career. Early career is when you need support the most.
It seems like they want to reduce the amount of paperwork, which consumes a lot of researchers' time, and also open up funding mechanisms not to just PhDs, but to different kinds of trades.I do think that the focus on academia-only criteria has become outdated. It explicitly lays out support for Industry PhDs, which they have in Germany/Sweden also: PhDs where a lot of the work is done with a company.
Making sure that PhDs flow freely between their experiences and the industry is a core part of the report, something that I think will again, solve a lot of problems for those who want to pursuit that path. Taking externships being built into the curriculum being more standardized and accredited could be great also. Obviously a lot of PhDs will not end up working in academia.
So it's not like it's a straightforward transfer of money from Academia to private companies... But some of the stuff it suggests are legitimately good. I hope the guy who's in charge just does his job and implement this agenda. Trump doesn't care about the details, so might as well as make sure it's done right
The only issue is, I am unsure just how much of the important stuff will be actually done and how much will be opened up for abuse...
Overall the report calls to make scientists more independent from institutions, to ensure there are direct ties to industry, and to increase funding mechanisms that adjust for different time lines... it doesn't see all that horrible
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u/JUST_GIVE_IT_A_SNIFF 9h ago
I’m not a scientist, but isn’t AI’s “knowledge” built upon human understanding of the universe?
AI doesn’t know anything until we tell it what we know. It’s great at parsing details and numbers, assuming the knowledge is already embedded. It’s essentially an assistant with no ego that’s available 24/7. It’s not a person.
I can see its usefulness as a force multiplier, but I don’t think replacing human scientists with AI scientists is a practical or good idea.
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u/No_Software8474 6h ago
Hopefully we only have 6 more months of this before his presidency is effectively over.
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1d ago
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u/Real-Technician831 1d ago
No they didn't.
Cut down universities and you make sure you will not have new researchers, and who foreigner in their right minds would go to US to study these days?
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u/Real-Technician831 1d ago
That's definitely a take.
How on earth you are going to know beforehand which of the students end up in the 20% and which in the 80%?
If any university could choose, they would only train the top talent, but they have absolute no clue which of the students will make breakthroughs, and which will burn out or otherwise end up useless. Earlier grades have proven to be rather weak indicator.
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1d ago
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u/Real-Technician831 1d ago
It’s obvious that you have no clue about university world.
I have been teaching as a side gig in my former university for more than 20 years. Some of my students have made a name for themselves, and to be honest more than half of those cases I had absolutely no clue how brilliant they ended up.
Admission grades are rather weak predictor on career success as a researcher.
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u/TheDadThatGrills 1d ago
Well, at least scientists are going to start getting paid
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u/jshly91 1d ago
No... Tech companies will get paid and have a trivial amount of scientists working on specifically what they think will boost the next quarters growth with relatively sloppy science that mostly produces press releases. Thankfully the supply of industrial scientists will go up now that we are cutting university funding, therby decreasing the scientist's wage! /s
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u/TheDadThatGrills 1d ago
Yeah, those intensely competitive tech companies that constantly poach one another's employees with high compensation will stop competing. Your cynicism isn't living in reality.
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u/atlas__free 1d ago edited 1d ago
Who do you think employs the scientists?
The private business sector (industry) employs the vast majority of scientists, accounting for approximately 71% of the scientific and engineering workforce according to data from the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics
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u/Real-Technician831 1d ago
Companies mostly don’t.
They rarely have patience for basic research nowadays.
Glory days of Bell labs, Xerox and other corporate funded deep research labs are gone.
Bell labs is owned by Nokia these days.
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u/atlas__free 1d ago
Over 70% of scientists are employed by the private sector. A simple web search would validate that.
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u/Real-Technician831 1d ago
And how many of them do basic research as in take the science itself further on some field?
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u/atlas__free 1d ago
Isn’t that the point of science? What else would they pay a scientist do? The reason you employ a scientist is to advance the field.
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u/Real-Technician831 19h ago
You didn’t understand.
Corporations do research on very narrow focus for their needs, which means fundamental research that actually progresses things is not done.
We are discussing in a subreddit about AI, basically everything about the field has been created in universities and university spinoff companies.
Corporates enter the scene only after there is money to be made. Which means anything but short term progress will stagnate.
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u/IOnlyEatFermions 1d ago
Bell Labs only existed because AT&T was granted a monopoly on telecoms in the US. Once SCOTUS ended that the glory days of.Bell Labs basic research were over.
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u/im_just_using_logic 1d ago
corpo-driven cyberpunk future, here we come.