AI as a Third Epistemic Tool

Updated: 2025.10.17 4D ago 3 sources
The piece argues AI is neither historical induction nor scientific law‑finding, but a new way of harnessing complex regularities without mechanistic interpretability. This 'third magic' can produce powerful results while remaining stochastic and opaque, forcing us to use systems we cannot fully explain. — If AI becomes a distinct mode of knowledge production, institutions will need new norms for reliability, accountability, and trust when deploying inherently opaque tools.

Sources

Army General Says He's Using AI To Improve 'Decision-Making'
msmash 2025.10.17 62% relevant
Maj. Gen. William Taylor says he asks a chatbot (“Chat”) to build models for personal decisions affecting readiness and to run predictive analysis for logistics/operations—an example of leaders treating AI as a distinct way of knowing and synthesizing beyond traditional staff work or data analysis.
Google DeepMind Partners With Fusion Startup
BeauHD 2025.10.16 62% relevant
DeepMind’s Torax is being used to discover robust plasma‑control policies and optimize reactor operations—an example of AI extracting usable regularities in a complex, poorly modeled physical system, beyond traditional theory‑first or induction‑only approaches.
The Third Magic
Noah Smith 2025.10.05 100% relevant
Smith’s claim that modern AI works like 'spells,' with Sora 2 producing unexpected taglines ('Long Ears. Long Rule.') and even Terence Tao using AI for research snippets despite opacity.
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