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Can AI do maths yet? Thoughts from a mathematician

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Re: Can AI do maths yet? Thoughts from a mathematician

#251

"Can AI do math for us" is the canonical wrong question. People want self-driving cars so they can drink and watch TV. We should crave tools that enhance our abilities, as tools have done since prehistoric times. I'm a research mathematician. In the 1980's I'd ask everyone I knew a question, and flip through the hard bound library volumes of Mathematical Reviews, hoping to recognize something. If I was lucky, I'd get…

I think I'm missing your point? You still want to enjoy doing math yourself? Is that what you are saying? So you equate "Can AI do math in my place?" with "Can AI drink and watch TV in my place?"

Re: Can AI do maths yet? Thoughts from a mathematician

#252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I straddle both worlds. Consider that using the lens of mathematical reasoning to understand everything is a bit like trying to use a single mathematical theory (eg that of groups) to comprehend mathematics as a whole. You will almost always benefit and enrich your own understanding by daring to incorporate outside perspectives. Consider also that even as digital technology and the ratiomathimatical understanding of…

I don't disagree, I just don't think it is done well or at least as seriously as it used to. In modern philosophy, there are many mathematically specious arguments, that just make clear how large the mathematical gap has become e.g. improper application of Godel's incompleteness theorems. Yet Godel was a philosopher himself, who would disagree with its current hand-wavy usage. 19th/20th was a golden era of philosophy…

While I agree that these are titans of 20th c. philosophy, particularly of the philosophy of mathematics and logic, the overarching school they belonged to (logical positivism) has been thoroughly and rightly criticized, and it is informative to read these criticisms to understand why a view of life that is overly mathematical is in many ways inadequate. Your comment still argues from a very limited perspective. There is no reason that correct application of Gödel s theorem should be any indication of the richness of someone's philosophical views unless you are already a staunchly committed reductionist who values mathematical arguments above all else (why? can maths help you explain and understand the phenomena of love in a way that will actually help you experience love? this is just one example domain where it does not make much sense), or unless they are specifically attempting a philosophy of mathematics. The question of whether or not we can effectively model cognition and human mental function using mathematical models is not a question of mathematical philosophy, but rather one of epistemology. If you really want to head a spurious argument, read McCulloch and Pitts. They essentially present an argument of two premises, the brain is finite, and we can create a machine of formal "neurons" (which are not even complete models of real neurons) that computes a boolean function, they then conclude that they must have a model of cognition, that cognition must be nothing more than computation, and that the brain must basically be a Turing machine.

The relevance of mathematics to the cognitive problem must be decided outside of mathematics. As another poster said, even if you buy the theorems, it is still an empirical question as to whether or not they really model what they claim to model, and whether or not that model is of a fidelity that we find acceptable for a definition of general intelligence. Often, people reach claims of adequacy today not by producing really fantastic models but instead by lowering the bar enormously. They claim that these models approximate humans by severely reducing the idea of what it means to be an intelligent human to the specific talents their tech happens to excel at (e.g. apparently being a language parrot is all that intelligence is, ignoring all the very nuanced views and definitions of intelligence we have come up with over the course of history. A machine that is not embodied ina skeletal structure and cannot even experience, let alone solve, the vast number of physical, anatomical problems we contend with on a daily basis is, in my view, still very far from anything I would call general intelligence).

Re: Can AI do maths yet? Thoughts from a mathematician

#253
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> don't trust Nobel laureates or even winners Nobel laureate and winner are the same thing. > Linus Pauling was talking absolute garbage, harmful and evil, after winning the Nobel. Can you be more specific, what garbage? And which Nobel prize do you mean – Pauling got two, one for chemistry and one for peace.

Thank you, my bad. I was referring to Linus's harmful and evil promotion of Vitamin C as the cure for everything and cancer. I don't think Linus was attaching that garbage to any particular Nobel prize. But people did say to their doctors: "Are you a Nobel winner, doctor?". Don't think they cared about particular prize either.

> Linus's harmful and evil promotion of Vitamin C

Which is "harmful and evil" thanks to your afterknowledge. He had based his books on the research that failed to replicate. But given low toxicity of vitamin C it's not that "evil" to recommend treatment even if probabilistic estimation of positive effects is not that high.

Sloppy, but not exceptionally bad. At least it was instrumental in teaching me to not expect marvels coming from dietary research.

Re: Can AI do maths yet? Thoughts from a mathematician

#254

"Can AI do math for us" is the canonical wrong question. People want self-driving cars so they can drink and watch TV. We should crave tools that enhance our abilities, as tools have done since prehistoric times. I'm a research mathematician. In the 1980's I'd ask everyone I knew a question, and flip through the hard bound library volumes of Mathematical Reviews, hoping to recognize something. If I was lucky, I'd get…

I think I'm missing your point? You still want to enjoy doing math yourself? Is that what you are saying? So you equate "Can AI do math in my place?" with "Can AI drink and watch TV in my place?"

AI will not do math for us, but maybe eventually it will lead to another mainstream tool for mathematicians. Along with R, Matlab, Sage, GAP, Magma, ...

It would be interesting if in the future mathematicians are just as fluent in some (possibly AI-powered) proof verifying tool, as they are with LaTeX today.

Re: Can AI do maths yet? Thoughts from a mathematician

#255

As someone who has a 18 yo son who wants to study math, this has me (and him) ... worried ... about becoming obsolete? But I'm wondering what other people think of this analogy. I used to be a bench scientist (molecular genetics). There were world class researchers who were more creative than I was. I even had a Nobel Laureate once tell me that my research was simply "dotting 'i's and crossing 't's". Nevertheless, I…

I was just thinking about this. I already posted a comment here, but I will say that as a mathematician (PhD in number theory), that for me, AI signficantly takes away the beauty of doing mathematics within a realm in which AI is used. The best part of math (again, just for me) is that it was a journey that was done by hand with only the human intellect that computers didn't understand. The beauty of the subject was…

I think it will become apparent how bad they are at it. They’re algorithms and not sentient beings. They do not think of themselves, their place in the world, and do not fathom the contents of the minds of others. They do no care what others think of them.

Whatever they write only happens to contain some truth by virtue of the model and the training data. An algorithm doesn’t know what truth is or why we value it. It’s a bullshitter of the highest calibre.

Then comes the question: will they write proofs that we will consider beautiful and elegant, that we will remember and pass down?

Or will they generate what they’ve been asked to and nothing less? That would be utterly boring to read.

Re: Can AI do maths yet? Thoughts from a mathematician

#256
post #87

Every profession seems to have a pessimistic view of AI as soon as it starts to make progress in their domain. Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. Artists seem to be in the depression state, many programmers are still in the denial phase. Pretty solid denial here from a mathematician. o3 was a proof of concept, like every other domain AI enters, it's going to keep getting better. Society is CLEARLY…

The reason why this is so disruptive is because it will effect hundreds of fields simultaneously. Previously workers in a field disrupted by automation would retrain to a different part of the economy. If AI pans out to the point that there are mass layoffs in hundreds of sectors of the economy at once, then i’m not sure the process we have haphazardly set up now will work. People will have no idea where to go beyond…

Well it hasn’t happened yet at least (unemployment is near historic lows). How much better does AI need to get? And do we actually expect it to happen? Improving on random benchmarks is not necessarily evidence of being able to do a specific job.

Re: Can AI do maths yet? Thoughts from a mathematician

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The universal approximation theorem is set in a precise mathematical context; I encourage you to limit its applicability to that context despite the marketing label "universal" (which it isn't). Consider your concession about empiricism. There's no empirical way to prove (i.e. there's no experiment that can demonstrate beyond doubt) that all brain or other organic processes are deterministic and can be represented co…

Function is the most general way of describing relations. Non-deterministic processes can be represented as functions with a probability distribution codomain. Physics seems to require only continuous functions. Sorry, but there's not much evidence that can support human exceptionalism.

I don't understand your point here. A (logical) relation is, by definition, a more general way of describing relations than a function, and it is telling that we still suck at using and developing truly relational models that are not univalent (i.e. functions). Only a few old logicians really took the calculus of relations proper seriously (Pierce, for one). We use functions precisely because they are less general, they are rigid, and simpler to work with. I do not think anyone is working under the impression that a function is a high fidelity means to model the world as it is experienced and actually exists. It is necessarily reductionistic (and abstract). Any truth we achieve through functional models is necessarily a general, abstracted, truth, which in many ways proves to be extremely useful but in others (e.g. when an essential piece of information in the particular is not accounted for in the general reductive model) can be disastrous.

Re: Can AI do maths yet? Thoughts from a mathematician

#258

"Can AI do math for us" is the canonical wrong question. People want self-driving cars so they can drink and watch TV. We should crave tools that enhance our abilities, as tools have done since prehistoric times. I'm a research mathematician. In the 1980's I'd ask everyone I knew a question, and flip through the hard bound library volumes of Mathematical Reviews, hoping to recognize something. If I was lucky, I'd get…

Your optimism should be tempered with the downside of progress meaning that AI in the near future may not only inspire creativity in humans, but it can replace human creativity all together. Why do I need to hire an artist for my movie/video game/advertisement when AI can replicate all the creativity I need.

This was about mathematics.

Re: Can AI do maths yet? Thoughts from a mathematician

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I'm missing your point? You still want to enjoy doing math yourself? Is that what you are saying? So you equate "Can AI do math in my place?" with "Can AI drink and watch TV in my place?"

AI will not do math for us, but maybe eventually it will lead to another mainstream tool for mathematicians. Along with R, Matlab, Sage, GAP, Magma, ... It would be interesting if in the future mathematicians are just as fluent in some (possibly AI-powered) proof verifying tool, as they are with LaTeX today.

AI can already do a bunch of math. So "AI will not do math for us" is just factually wrong.

Re: Can AI do maths yet? Thoughts from a mathematician

#260
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s worse about it? It never tells you the wrong thing, at the very least.

When you give it a large math problem and the answer is "seven point one three five ... ", and it shows a plot of the result v some randomly selected domain, well there could be more I'd like to know. You can unlock a full derivation of the solution, for cases where you say "Solve" or "Simplify", but what I (and I suspect GP) might want, is to know why a few of the key steps might work. It's a fantastic tool that hel…

Im reviewing linear algebra now and would also love to know that book!
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