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Terence Tao: At the Erdos problem website, AI assistance now becoming routine

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Re: Terence Tao: At the Erdos problem website, AI assistance now becoming routine

#91

Post by int_19h »

perching_aix wrote: post #87
int_19h wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "weird" part about Hungarian names and words for English speakers is that "y" is a modifier letter in most cases, not a sound in and of itself. So e.g. "Nagy" is pronounced closer to something like "Nahj".

They said: > Except when it comes to names when it gets a bit random! The letters "gy", "ty", and "ly" are not exclusive to names, nor are they significantly more common in names. It's not that I disagree people would struggle with these, just that it's not unique to names, so it couldn't have been what they were referring to there.

My implicit point was that this:

> The only weird ones I can think of are the ones that end in -y. For example, Görgey. They're meant to be -i endings.

is not actually surprising to an English speaker.

Re: Terence Tao: At the Erdos problem website, AI assistance now becoming routine

#92

Post by abhgh »

fastasucan wrote: post #56
tyre wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is where LLMs shine for learning imo: throwing a paper in Claude and getting an overview then being able to ask questions. Especially for fields that I didn’t study at the Bachelors or Masters level, like biology. Getting to engage with deeper research with a knowledgeable tutor assistant has enabled me to go deeper than I otherwise could.

How do you know its correct? And how do you learn to engage with the theory heavy subject doing it this way?

You don't - the way I use LLMs for explanations is that I keep going back and forth between the LLM explanation and Google search /Wikipedia. And of course asking the LLM to cite sources helps.

This might sound cumbersome but without the LLM I wouldn't have (1) known what to search for, in a way (2) that lets me incrementally build a mental model. So it's a net win for me. The only gap I see is coverage/recall: when asked for different techniques to accomplish something, the LLM might miss some techniques - and what is missed depends upon the specific LLM. My solution here is asking multiple LLMs and going back to Google search.

Re: Terence Tao: At the Erdos problem website, AI assistance now becoming routine

#94

Post by gerdesj »

ChicagoBoy11 wrote: post #90
mjcohen wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I saw this on a math department bulletin board about 1960) A theorem both deep and profound States that every circle is round But in a paper by Erdos Written in Kurdish A counterexample is found

I suspect there is a great joke embedded in here, but sadly it went over my head. Any help?

Erdős rhymes with Kurdish.

EDIT: Oh and Erdős was the great collaborator. There is an Erdős number (Bacon and Ozzie too) which defines how close you are to him. eg if you co-authored a paper with Erdős you have a Erdős number of one. If you co-auth a paper with someone with an Erdős number of one, then you have an Erdős number of two etc.

I think that the Bacon (Kevin Bacon) number was the original and there is also a Black Sabbath number which is related to Ozzie (MHRiP).

I also gather that a very few people have managed a minimum measure of all three numbers. Feynman might be one of them (its too late to check).

Re: Terence Tao: At the Erdos problem website, AI assistance now becoming routine

#95

Post by mrwrong »

malux85 wrote: post #88
fastasucan wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know its correct? And how do you learn to engage with the theory heavy subject doing it this way?

How do you know anything is correct? LLMs can be wrong, humans can be wrong, you can be wrong. The motto of the royal society, is "Nullius in verba" which is a latin phrase : "take nobody's word for it," that's LITERALLY the motto of the royal society. Its your job as a scientist and critical thinker to test assumptions, oberve reality and use empirical inquiry to seek truth, and in the process, question ALL sources…

amusing that this comment contains a subtle appeal to authority. "take nobody's word for it" -- you can take the Royal Society's word for that

Re: Terence Tao: At the Erdos problem website, AI assistance now becoming routine

#96

Post by estimator7292 »

fastasucan wrote: post #56
tyre wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is where LLMs shine for learning imo: throwing a paper in Claude and getting an overview then being able to ask questions. Especially for fields that I didn’t study at the Bachelors or Masters level, like biology. Getting to engage with deeper research with a knowledgeable tutor assistant has enabled me to go deeper than I otherwise could.

How do you know its correct? And how do you learn to engage with the theory heavy subject doing it this way?

Same way you can tell if the source material is correct. Or indeed, anything you read online. How confident are you in the veracity of any random Wikipedia article or blog?

You use your brain and cross-reference multiple sources.

Even traditional research methods return bogus information. People are just wrong sometimes and you as a researcher have to deal with that.

The way to deal with LLM accuracy is to not trust it blindly. Same as everything. The LLM will try to convince you and itself that it's right even when it isn't. But you can say the same for a shockingly large number of historic works written by explorers and people who had no clue what they were talking about.

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