AI just became a full-fledged scientist.

Move over, human researchers! There's a new AI in town that can do everything from coming up with ideas to writing papers and even peer-reviewing them.

What's going on here?

Sakana AI is attempting to create an AI scientist who can discover new ideas, starting with ML research.

What does this mean?

The AI Scientist automates the entire research process - brainstorming ideas, coding experiments, analyzing results, writing papers, and even peer-reviewing. It can work in an open-ended loop, building on previous ideas to generate new research directions

The system has already produced papers in areas like diffusion models and transformer architectures that were rated as "Weak Accept" for top ML conferences. Each paper costs only about $15 to produce, potentially democratizing research.

Why should I care?

This could be a game-changer for scientific discovery. Imagine unleashing thousands of tireless AI researchers on the world's toughest problems! But it also raises thorny questions:

• Will human scientists become obsolete? (The creators say no, we'll just "move up the food chain")

• How do we prevent misuse, like flooding journals with AI-generated papers?

• Can AI really come up with truly revolutionary ideas, or just iterate on existing concepts?

Either way, the era of fully automated science is here. Better brush up on your peer review skills - you might be evaluating an AI's next big breakthrough!