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GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics

openai.com

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

#381

Post by revlsas »

int_19h wrote: post #349
tedd4u wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does a 12-hour solution cost an OpenAI customer?

$200/month would cover many such sessions every month. The real question is, what does it cost OpenAI? I'm pretty sure both their plans are well below cost, at least for users who max them out (and if you pay $200 for something then you'll probably do that!). How long before the money runs out? Can they get it cheap enough to be profitable at this price level, or is this going to be "get them addicted then jack it up…

No because open source models are close behind

Compute costs will fall drastically for existing models

But it's likely that frontier models of the future won't be released to the public at all, because they'll be too good

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

#382

Post by sheepscreek »

virgildotcodes wrote: post #321
utopiah wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> modern LLMs are incredibly capable, and relentless, at solving problems that have a verification test suite. Feel like it's a bit what I tried to expressed few weeks ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46791642 namely that we are just pouring computational resources at verifiable problems then claim that astonishingly sometimes it works. Sure LLMs even have a slight bias, namely they do rely on statistics so i…

> throw stuff at the wall, see what sticks, once something finally does report it as grandiose and claim to be "intelligent". What do we think humans are doing? I think it’s not unfair to say our minds are constantly trying to assemble the pieces available to them in various ways. Whether we’re actively thinking about a problem or in the background as we go about our day. Every once in a while the pieces fit together…

The field of medicine - pharmacology and drug discovery, is an optimized version of that. It works a bit like this:

Instead of brute-forcing with infinite options, reduce the problem space by starting with some hunch about the mechanism. Then the hard part that can take decades: synthesize compounds with the necessary traits to alter the mechanism in a favourable way, while minimizing unintended side-effects.

Then try on a live or lab grown specimen and note effectiveness. Repeat the cycle, and with every success, push to more realistic forms of testing until it reaches human trials.

Many drugs that reach the last stage - human trials - often end up being used for something completely other than what they were designed for! One example of that is minoxidil - designed to regular blood pressure, used for regrowing hair!

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

#383

Post by adgjlsfhk1 »

tsimionescu wrote: post #342
virgildotcodes wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> throw stuff at the wall, see what sticks, once something finally does report it as grandiose and claim to be "intelligent". What do we think humans are doing? I think it’s not unfair to say our minds are constantly trying to assemble the pieces available to them in various ways. Whether we’re actively thinking about a problem or in the background as we go about our day. Every once in a while the pieces fit together…

While I don't think anyone has a plausible theory that goes to this level of detail on how humans actually think, there's still a major difference. I think it's fair to say that if we are doing a brute force search, we are still astonishingly more energy efficient at it than these LLMs. The amount of energy that goes into running an LLM for 12h straight is vastly higher than what it takes for humans to think about si…

at similar quality NN speed is increasing by ~5-10x per year. nothing SOTA is efficient. it's the preview for what will be efficient in 2-3 years

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

#385

Post by brokencode »

D-Machine wrote: post #315
brokencode wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crazy that an honest question like this gets downvoted. I honestly think the downvote button is pretty trash for online communities. It kills diversity of thought and discussion and leaves you with an echo chamber. If you disagree with or dislike something, leave a response. Express your view. Save the downvotes for racism, calls for violence, etc.

Downvotes eventually turn all online communities into echo chambers, definitely. It is only a matter of time for HN, and you can see it accelerating in the past 1-2 years (though mostly on AI stuff, and mostly in downvote behaviour - it still remains surprisingly resilient overall).

I feel like the only upside of the downvote is to act as sort of a mob moderation system, allowing offensive comments to naturally sink to the bottom.

Maybe in the future, platforms can have high quality auto moderation using AI to read every post and delete/flag those not following community guidelines.

I’m sure this would work well today, though not sure about the cost.

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

#386

Post by sejje »

emil-lp wrote: post #19
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…

"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.

The Average Joe reads at an 8th grade level. 21% are illiterate in the US.

LLMs surpassed the average human a long time ago IMO. When LLMs fail to measure up to humans, it's that they fail to measure up against human experts in a given field, not the Average Joe.

We are surrounded by NPCs.

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

#387

Post by uh_uh »

NateEag wrote: post #294
NewsaHackO wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wasn't the C compiler it made impressive to you?

Like everything genAI, it was amazing yet surprisingly crappy. Yes, the bear is definitely dancing. But a few feet away there's a world-class step dancer doing intricate rhythms they've perfected over twenty years of hard work. The bear's kind of shuffling along to the beat like a stoner in a club. It's amazing it can do it at all... but the resulting compiler is not actually good enough to be worth using.

OK, but don't you see where this is going? The trajectory that we're on?

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

#388

Post by uh_uh »

nilkn wrote: post #44

It 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 pa…

Would you be similarly pedantic if a high-schooler did the same?

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

#389

Post by chaos_emergent »

sheepscreek wrote: post #382
virgildotcodes wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> throw stuff at the wall, see what sticks, once something finally does report it as grandiose and claim to be "intelligent". What do we think humans are doing? I think it’s not unfair to say our minds are constantly trying to assemble the pieces available to them in various ways. Whether we’re actively thinking about a problem or in the background as we go about our day. Every once in a while the pieces fit together…

The field of medicine - pharmacology and drug discovery, is an optimized version of that. It works a bit like this: Instead of brute-forcing with infinite options, reduce the problem space by starting with some hunch about the mechanism. Then the hard part that can take decades: synthesize compounds with the necessary traits to alter the mechanism in a favourable way, while minimizing unintended side-effects. Then tr…

It’s almost like the iteration loop refines itself between checks notes in Sutton search and learning

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

#390

Post by nilkn »

uh_uh wrote: post #388
nilkn wrote: post #44

It 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 pa…

Would you be similarly pedantic if a high-schooler did the same?

Yes. Someone making one contribution among many to a paper clearly does not deserve anything like sole authorship credit of the entire paper, which is what the title from OpenAI implies to me. I don't believe I'm being pedantic at all. And, by the way, high schoolers or college students make co-author-level contributions to real papers quite frequently in the US at least (I was one of them).

The text of the post is much more honest. The title is where the dishonesty is.

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