Car manufacturers need to step up their hype game...
New Honda Civic discovered Pacific Ocean!
New F150 discovers Utah Salt Flats!
Sure it took humans engineering and operating our machines, but the car is the real contributor here!
GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics
41–50 of 430 posts
Re: GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We're talking about significant contributions to theoretical physics. Whoever wrote the prompts and guided ChatGPT made significant contributions to theoretical physics. ChatGPT is just a tool they used to get there. I'm sure AI-bloviators and pelican bike-enjoyers are all quite impressed, but the humans should be getting the research credit for using their tools correctly. Let's not pretend the calculator doing it…
If a helicopter drops someone off on the top of Mount Everest, it's reasonable to say that the helicopter did the work and is not just a tool they used to hike up the mountain.
Who piloted the helicopter in this scenario, a human or chatgpt? You'd say the pilot dropped them off in a helicopter. The helicopter didn't fly itself there.
Re: GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics
#43The headline may make it seem like AI just discovered some new result in physics all on its own, but reading the post, humans started off trying to solve some problem, it got complex, GPT simplified it and found a solution with the simpler representation. It took 12 hours for GPT pro to do this. In my experience LLM’s can make new things when they are some linear combination of existing things but I haven’t been to g…
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Absolutely no way this is true right? Ilya left around the time 4o was released. I can't imagine they haven't had a single successful run since then.
Re: GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics
#44It would be more accurate to say that humans using GPT-5.2 derived a new result in theoretical physics (or, if you're being generous, humans and GPT-5.2 together derived a new result). The title makes it sound like GPT-5.2 produced a complete or near-complete paper on its own, but what it actually did was take human-derived datapoints, conjecture a generalization, then prove that generalization. Having scanned the paper, this seems to be a significant enough contribution to warrant a legitimate author credit, but I still think the title on its own is an exaggeration.
Re: GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics
#45So wait,GPT found a formula that humans couldn't,then the humans proved it was right? That's either terrifying or the model just got lucky. Probably the latter.
> found a formula that humans couldn't Couldn't is an immensely high bar in this context, didn't seems more appropriate and renders this whole thing slightly less exciting.
I'd say "couldn't in 20 hours" might be more defensible. Depends on how many humans though. "couldn't in 20 GPT watt-hours" would give us like 2,000 humans or so.
Re: GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics
#46The headline may make it seem like AI just discovered some new result in physics all on its own, but reading the post, humans started off trying to solve some problem, it got complex, GPT simplified it and found a solution with the simpler representation. It took 12 hours for GPT pro to do this. In my experience LLM’s can make new things when they are some linear combination of existing things but I haven’t been to g…
In my experience humans can make new things when they are some linear combination of existing things but I haven’t been able to get them to do something totally out of distribution yet from first principles[0].
[0]: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/19/gpt-2-as-step-toward-g...
Re: GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
How was that not the case? As far as I understand it ChatGPT was instrumental to solving a problem. Even if it did not entirely solve it by itself, the combination with other tools such as Lean is still very impressive, no?
It didn't solve it, it simply found that it had been solved in a publication and that the list of open problems wasn't updated.
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Re: GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics
#48The headline may make it seem like AI just discovered some new result in physics all on its own, but reading the post, humans started off trying to solve some problem, it got complex, GPT simplified it and found a solution with the simpler representation. It took 12 hours for GPT pro to do this. In my experience LLM’s can make new things when they are some linear combination of existing things but I haven’t been to g…
"GPT did this" . Authored by Guevara (Institute for Advanced Study), Lupsasca (Vanderbilt University), Skinner (University of Cambridge), and Strominger (Harvard University). Probably not something that the average GI Joe would be able to prompt their way to... I am skeptical until they show the chat log leading up to the conjecture and proof.
I'm a big LLM sceptic but that's… moving the goalposts a little too far. How could an average Joe even understand the conjecture enough to write the initial prompt? Or do you mean that experts would give him the prompt to copy-paste, and hope that the proverbial monkey can come up with a Henry V? At the very least posit someone like a grad student in particle physics as the human user.
Re: GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
If this worked for 12 hours to derive the simplified formula along with its proof then it guided itself and made significant contributions by any useful definition of the word, hence Open AI having an author credit.
> hence Open AI having an author credit. How much precedence is there for machines or tools getting an author credit in research? Genuine question, I don't actually know. Would we give an author credit to e.g. a chimpanzee if it happened to circle the right page of a text book while working with researchers, leading them to a eureka moment?
>How much precedence is there for machines or tools getting an author credit in research?
Well what do you think ? Do the authors (or a single symbolic one) of pytorch or numpy or insert typically get credits on papers that utilize them heavily? Well Clearly these prominent institutions thought GPT's contribution significant enough to warrant an Open AI credit.
>Would we give an author credit to e.g. a chimpanzee if it happened to circle the right page of a text book while working with researchers, leading them to a eureka moment?
Cool Story. Good thing that's not what happened so maybe we can do away with all these pointless non sequiturs yeah ? If you want to have a good faith argument, you're welcome to it, but if you're going to go on these nonsensical tangents, it's best we end this here.
Re: GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics
#50I like the use of the word "derives". However, it gets outshined by "new result" in public eyes.
I expect lots of derivations (new discoveries whose pieces were already in place somewhere, but no one has put them together).
In this case, the human authors did the thinking and also used the LLM, but this could happen without the original human author too (some guy posts some partial on the internet, no one realizes is novel knowledge, gets reused by AI later). It would be tremendously nice if credit was kept in such possible scenarios.