If AI scientists are writing millions of papers, many of which are slop, and some of which are incremental progress, how would we identify the one or two which come up with an extremely productive new idea? In 1948, Shannon was one of hundreds of engineers at Bell Labs working on how to cleanly send voice signals over noisy copper wires. His paper sat in the same technical journal as reports on reducing static and building better filters. How would you recognize that he has come up with this…