Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics

openai.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 430 posts

Re: GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics

#51

Post by bpodgursky »

nozzlegear wrote: post #42
bpodgursky wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

“They have chosen cunning instead of belief. Their prison is only in their minds, yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out.”

― C.S. Lewis, The Last Battle

Re: GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics

#52

Post by outlace »

bottlepalm wrote: post #26
outlace wrote: post #11

The 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…

Is every new thing not just combinations of existing things? What does out of distribution even mean? What advancement has ever made that there wasn’t a lead up of prior work to it? Is there some fundamental thing that prevents AI from recombining ideas and testing theories?

For example, ever since the first GPT 4 I’ve tried to get LLM’s to build me a specific type of heart simulation that to my knowledge does not exist anywhere on the public internet (otherwise I wouldn’t try to build it myself) and even up to GPT 5.3 it still cannot do it.

But I’ve successfully made it build me a great Poker training app, a specific form that also didn’t exist, but the ingredients are well represented on the internet.

And I’m not trying to imply AI is inherently incapable, it’s just an empirical (and anecdotal) observation for me. Maybe tomorrow it’ll figure it out. I have no dogmatic ideology on the matter.

Re: GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics

#53

Post by randomtoast »

outlace wrote: post #11

The 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…

> but I haven’t been to get them to do something totally out of distribution yet from first principles

Can humans actually do that? Sometimes it appears as if we have made a completely new discovery. However, if you look more closely, you will find that many events and developments led up to this breakthrough, and that it is actually an improvement on something that already existed. We are always building on the shoulders of giants.

Re: GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics

#55

Post by kuboble »

nozzlegear wrote: post #35
famouswaffles wrote: post #29

Earlier 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?

I have seem stuff like "you can use my program if you will make me a co-author".

That usually comes up with some support usually.

Re: GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics

#56

Post by knicholes »

mmaunder wrote: post #18
Davidzheng wrote: post #10

"An internal scaffolded version of GPT‑5.2 then spent roughly 12 hours reasoning through the problem, coming up with the same formula and producing a formal proof of its validity." When I use GPT 5.2 Thinking Extended, it gave me the impression that it's consistent enough/has a low enough rate of errors (or enough error correcting ability) to autonomously do math/physics for many hours if it were allowed to [but I gu…

Yes and 5.3 and the latest codex cli client is incredibly good across compactions. Anyone know the methodology they're using to maintain state and manage context for a 12 hour run? It could be as simple as a single dense document and its own internal compaction algrorithm, I guess.

https://developers.openai.com/cookbook/articles/codex_exec_p... might be what you're looking for

Re: GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics

#58

Post by outlace »

bpodgursky wrote: post #20
outlace wrote: post #11

The 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…

I don't want to be rude but like, maybe you should pre-register some statement like "LLMs will not be able to do X" in some concrete domain, because I suspect your goalposts are shifting without you noticing. We're talking about significant contributions to theoretical physics. You can nitpick but honestly go back to your expectations 4 years ago and think — would I be pretty surprised and impressed if an AI could do…

I never said LLMs will not be able to do X. I gave my summary of the article and my anecdotal experiences with LLMs. I have no LLM ideology. We will see what tomorrow brings.

Re: GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics

#59

Post by dotancohen »

randomtoast wrote: post #53
outlace wrote: post #11

The 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…

> but I haven’t been to get them to do something totally out of distribution yet from first principles Can humans actually do that? Sometimes it appears as if we have made a completely new discovery. However, if you look more closely, you will find that many events and developments led up to this breakthrough, and that it is actually an improvement on something that already existed. We are always building on the shou…

Relativity comes to mind.

You could nitpick a rebuttal, but no matter how many people you give credit, general relativity was a completely novel idea when it was proposed. I'd argue for special relatively as well.

Re: GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics

#60

Post by ericmay »

CGMthrowaway wrote: post #24
outlace wrote: post #11

The 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…

This is the critical bit (paraphrasing): Humans have worked out the amplitudes for integer n up to n = 6 by hand, obtaining very complicated expressions, which correspond to a “Feynman diagram expansion” whose complexity grows superexponentially in n. But no one has been able to greatly reduce the complexity of these expressions, providing much simpler forms. And from these base cases, no one was then able to spot a…

Still pretty awesome though, if you ask me.
Post reply on HN