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GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics

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

#181

Post by buttered_toast »

lupsasca wrote: post #180
buttered_toast wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh that's really cool, I am not versed in physics by any means, can you explain how you believed there to be a simple formula but were unable to find it? What would lead you to believe that instead of just accepting it at face value?

There are closely related "MHV amplitudes" which naively obey a really complicated formula, but for which there famously also exists a much simpler "Parke-Taylor formula". Alfredo had derived a complicated expression for these new "single-minus amplitudes" and we were hoping we could find an analogue of the simpler "Parke-Taylor formula" for them.

Thank you for taking the time to reply, I see you might have already answered this elsewhere so it's much appreciated.

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

#182

Post by slibhb »

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…

> In my experience LLM’s can make new things when they are some linear combination of existing things but I haven’t been to get them to do something totally out of distribution yet from first principles.

What's the distinction between "first principles" and "existing things"?

I'm sympathetic to the idea that LLMs can't produce path-breaking results, but I think that's true only for a strict definition of path-breaking (that is quite rare for humnans too).

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

#183

Post by Davidzheng »

carefree-bob wrote: post #170
Davidzheng wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is there's been around 10 erdos problems solved by GPT by now. Most of them have been found to be either in literature or a very similar problem was solved in literature. But one or two solutions are quite novel. https://github.com/teorth/erdosproblems/wiki/AI-contribution... may be useful

I am not aware of any unsolved Erdos problem that was solved via an LLM. I am aware of LLMs contributing to variations on known proofs of previously solved Erdos problems. But the issue with having an LLM combine existing solutions or modify existing published solutions is that the previous solutions are in the training data of the LLM, and in general there are many options to make variations on known proofs. Most pr…

It's in the link above, but you can look at #1051 or #851 on the erdosproblems website.

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

#184

Post by not_kurt_godel »

famouswaffles wrote: post #116
emil-lp wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like saying: calculator drives new result in theoretical physics (In the hands of leading experts.)

No it's not like saying that at all, which is why Open AI have a credit on the paper.

And even if it were, calculators (computers) were world-changing technology when they were new.

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

#185

Post by getnormality »

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…

[flagged]

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

#186

Post by nyc_data_geek1 »

godelski wrote: post #123
CGMthrowaway wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I think this was all already figured out in 1986 though They cite that paper in the third paragraph... Naively, the n-gluon scattering amplitude involves order n! terms. Famously, for the special case of MHV (maximally helicity violating) tree amplitudes, Parke and Taylor [11] gave a simple and beautiful, closed-form, single-term expression for all n. It also seems to be a main talking point. I think this is a prim…

[flagged]

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

#187

Post by verdverm »

buttered_toast wrote: post #77
verdverm wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When's the last time they talked about it? I heard this from people who know more than me

Can't say, just seems implausible, but I am a nobody anyways ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm pretty sure it is widely known that the early 5.x series were built from 4.5 (unreleased). It seems more plausible the 5.x series is still in that continuation.

For some extra context, pre-training is ~1/3 of the training, where it gains the basic concepts of how tokens go together. Mid & late training are where you instill the kinds of anthropic behaviors we see today. I expect pre-training to increasingly become a lower percentage of overall training, putting aside any shifts of what happens in each phase.

So to me, it is plausible they can take the 4.x pre-training and keep pushing in the later phases. There is a lot of results out there to show scaling laws (limits) have not peaked yet. I would not be surprised to learn that Gemini 3 Deep Research had 50% late-training / RL

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

#188

Post by compass_copium »

Davidzheng wrote: post #13
emil-lp wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My understanding is there's been around 10 erdos problems solved by GPT by now. Most of them have been found to be either in literature or a very similar problem was solved in literature. But one or two solutions are quite novel. https://github.com/teorth/erdosproblems/wiki/AI-contribution... may be useful

...am I wrong in thinking that 1(a) is the relevant section here, and shows a lot of red?

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

#190

Post by elzbardico »

NewsaHackO wrote: post #178
cpard wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the c compiler results or the physics results this post is about?

His point is going to be some copium like since the c compiler is not as optimized as gcc, it was not impressive.

You probably don’t know what you’re talking about.
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