You laid out the theoretical limitations well, and I tend to agree with them.
I just get frustrated when people downplay how big of an impact filling in the gaps at the frontier of knowledge would have. 99.9% of researchers will never have an idea that adds a new spike to the knowledge frontier (rather than filling in holes), and 99.99% of research is just filling in gaps by combining existing ideas (numbers made up). In this realm, autoresearch may not be groundbreaking, but it can do the job. AlphaEvolve is similar.
If LLMs can actually get closer to something like that, it leaves human researchers a whole lot more time to focus on new ideas that could move entire fields forward. And their iteration speed can be a lot faster if AI agents can help with the implementation and testing of them.
I just get frustrated when people downplay how big of an impact filling in the gaps at the frontier of knowledge would have. 99.9% of researchers will never have an idea that adds a new spike to the knowledge frontier (rather than filling in holes), and 99.99% of research is just filling in gaps by combining existing ideas (numbers made up). In this realm, autoresearch may not be groundbreaking, but it can do the job. AlphaEvolve is similar.
If LLMs can actually get closer to something like that, it leaves human researchers a whole lot more time to focus on new ideas that could move entire fields forward. And their iteration speed can be a lot faster if AI agents can help with the implementation and testing of them.