For instance: Chemists using the AI backwards. Take some phrase like 'vanadium increases the Young's modulus versus silicon in 1040 steel' and then work the AI backwards from that phrase. As in, assume the AI outputted that phrase and see what inputs were most likely to generate it. There may be some real discoveries just by working an AI backwards iteratively.
Simple things like that are still open and attainable right now, it's just that AI is still so young that we really haven't explored all of what they do yet.
I think the real potential gains come when they start extending the architecture, but as long as it's just scaling up and different training/inference regimes, then it seems it'll be more of the same rather than game changer.
Given how connected the whole SF/AI scene appears to be (alchohol + drugs too?), it's hard to imagine a company the size of OpenAI not leaking. If there had been any amazing discoveries there, I think there'd at least be rumors (and not just "they seem to have something called Q* going on").
The big question is how much better it's going to get. We may be plateauing in capability-- or at least slowing in capability growth-- or we may not be.
But it doesn't need to get better for it to eat a lot of peoples' lunch.