Agentic AI System Struggles to Impress Human Researchers
TL;DR. An AI agent called 'The AI Scientist' attempted to automate computer science research, but original human authors found its output unimpressive. - A team from Sakana AI and others developed the system, which used Claude Opus 4.8 and OpenClaw. - The AI generated papers on machine learning pitfalls and underwent a 'shadow evaluation' by human experts. - Researchers question the AI's ability to produce true breakthroughs beyond optimizing existing techniques.
- AI agentic system 'The AI Scientist' developed concepts from computer-science papers.
- Original human authors of the papers were not impressed by the AI's research output.
- The system, built with Claude Opus 4.8 and OpenClaw, aimed to automate the scientific process.
- A 'shadow evaluation' method was used to assess the AI's research more rigorously than peer review.
Sources
- AI isn't ready to research itself — nature.com