'Rozum' orchestrates multiple flaky models and drives them to reasonable conclusions

Tech companies have in recent years developed a reputation for being rapacious rent-seekers, but can also be unwittingly generous because their penchant to prioritize popularity over quality leaves room for others to sell improvements or repairs.

Waterline Development, a water desalination startup, is the beneficiary of this legacy of commercial haste. Having tried AI models and found them wanting, it came up with a fix.

Derek Bednarski, founder and CEO, told The Register in an email that when his company tried to use large language models for materials science research "they were confidently wrong in ways that cost us months."

Bednarski said his company was trying to build a desalination product that was essentially a water battery – charging the cell would remove ions like salt from the water.

"We were debating between carbon cloth and cast carbon electrodes," he explained. "Not being PhDs in the space, we read relevant academic ...