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

Epoch confirms GPT5.4 Pro solved a frontier math open problem

epoch.ai

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 744 posts

Re: Epoch confirms GPT5.4 Pro solved a frontier math open problem

#131

Post by Dban1 »

blackcatsec wrote: post #112
qnleigh wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But human researchers are also remixers. Copying something I commented below: > Speaking as a researcher, the line between new ideas and existing knowledge is very blurry and maybe doesn't even exist. The vast majority of research papers get new results by combining existing ideas in novel ways. This process can lead to genuinely new ideas, because the results of a good project teach you unexpected things.

This is a way too simplistic model of the things humans provide to the process. Imagination, Hypothesis, Testing, Intuition, and Proofing. An AI can probably do an 'okay' job at summarizing information for meta studies. But what it can't do is go "Hey that's a weird thing in the result that hints at some other vector for this thing we should look at." Especially if that "thing" has never been analyzed before and ther…

But just like how there were never any clips of Will Smith eating spaghetti before AI, AI is able to synthesize different existing data into something in between. It might not be able to expand the circle of knowledge but it definitely can fill in the gaps within the circle itself

Re: Epoch confirms GPT5.4 Pro solved a frontier math open problem

#132

Post by Finbel »

blackcatsec wrote: post #112
qnleigh wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But human researchers are also remixers. Copying something I commented below: > Speaking as a researcher, the line between new ideas and existing knowledge is very blurry and maybe doesn't even exist. The vast majority of research papers get new results by combining existing ideas in novel ways. This process can lead to genuinely new ideas, because the results of a good project teach you unexpected things.

This is a way too simplistic model of the things humans provide to the process. Imagination, Hypothesis, Testing, Intuition, and Proofing. An AI can probably do an 'okay' job at summarizing information for meta studies. But what it can't do is go "Hey that's a weird thing in the result that hints at some other vector for this thing we should look at." Especially if that "thing" has never been analyzed before and ther…

>Hey that's a weird thing in the result that hints at some other vector for this thing we should look at

Kinda funny because that looked _very_ close to what my Opus 4.6 said yesterday when it was debugging compile errors for me. It did proceed to explore the other vector.

Re: Epoch confirms GPT5.4 Pro solved a frontier math open problem

#133

Post by razorbeamz »

XenophileJKO wrote: post #128
razorbeamz wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The important point I'm trying to reinforce is that LLMs are not capable of calculation. They can give an answer based on the fact that they have seen lots of calculations and their results, but they cannot actually perform mathematical functions.

That is a pretty bold assertion for a meatball of chemical and electrical potentials to make.

Do you know what "LLM" stands for? They are large language models, built on predicting language.

They are not capable of mathematics because mathematics and language are fundamentally separated from each other.

They can give you an answer that looks like a calculation, but they cannot perform a calculation. The most convincing of LLMs have even been programmed to recognize that they have been asked to perform a calculation and hand the task off to a calculator, and then receive the calculator's output as a prompt even.

But it is fundamentally impossible for an LLM to perform a calculation entirely on its own, the same way it is fundamentally impossible for an image recognition AI to suddenly write an essay or a calculator to generate a photo of a giraffe in space.

People like to think of "AI" as one thing but it's several things.

Re: Epoch confirms GPT5.4 Pro solved a frontier math open problem

#134

Post by staticassertion »

virgildotcodes wrote: post #56

I don't know why I am still perpetually shocked that the default assumption is that humans are somehow unique. It's this pervasive belief that underlies so much discussion around what it means to be intelligent. The null hypothesis goes out the window. People constantly make comments like "well it's just trying a bunch of stuff until something works" and it seems that they do not pause for a moment to consider whethe…

> I don't know why I am still perpetually shocked that the default assumption is that humans are somehow unique.

Because, empirically, we have numerous unique and differentiable qualities, obviously. Plenty of time goes into understanding this, we have a young but rigorous field of neuroscience and cognitive science.

Unless you mean "fundamentally unique" in some way that would persist - like "nothing could ever do what humans do".

> People constantly make comments like "well it's just trying a bunch of stuff until something works" and it seems that they do not pause for a moment to consider whether or not that also applies to humans.

I frankly doubt it applies to either system.

I'm a functionalist so I obviously believe that everything a human brain does is physical and could be replicated using some other material that can exhibit the necessary functions. But that does not mean that I have to think that the appearance of intelligence always is intelligence, or that an LLM/ Agent is doing what humans do.

Re: Epoch confirms GPT5.4 Pro solved a frontier math open problem

#137

Post by Philpax »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #88
MattGaiser wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am deeply baffled by AI denial at this point.

It's quite simple: it has yet to show it can actually be useful, and all the claims that it can have (so far) turned out to be self delusion if not deliberate lies. When the industry is run by grifters, you shouldn't really be surprised when people stop believing them.

you are posting in a thread about it finding a novel solution to an unsolved mathematics problem

Re: Epoch confirms GPT5.4 Pro solved a frontier math open problem

#138

Post by bluegatty »

blackcatsec wrote: post #112
qnleigh wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But human researchers are also remixers. Copying something I commented below: > Speaking as a researcher, the line between new ideas and existing knowledge is very blurry and maybe doesn't even exist. The vast majority of research papers get new results by combining existing ideas in novel ways. This process can lead to genuinely new ideas, because the results of a good project teach you unexpected things.

This is a way too simplistic model of the things humans provide to the process. Imagination, Hypothesis, Testing, Intuition, and Proofing. An AI can probably do an 'okay' job at summarizing information for meta studies. But what it can't do is go "Hey that's a weird thing in the result that hints at some other vector for this thing we should look at." Especially if that "thing" has never been analyzed before and ther…

""Hey that's a weird thing in the result that hints at some other vector for this thing we should look at." "

This is very common already in AI.

Just look at the internal reasoning of any high thinking model, the trace is full of those chains of thought.

Re: Epoch confirms GPT5.4 Pro solved a frontier math open problem

#139

Post by famouswaffles »

wrqvrwvq wrote: post #119
virgildotcodes wrote: post #56

I don't know why I am still perpetually shocked that the default assumption is that humans are somehow unique. It's this pervasive belief that underlies so much discussion around what it means to be intelligent. The null hypothesis goes out the window. People constantly make comments like "well it's just trying a bunch of stuff until something works" and it seems that they do not pause for a moment to consider whethe…

It's only because humans came up with a problem, worked with the ai and verified the result that this achievement means anything at all. An ai "checking its own work" is practically irrelevant when they all seem to go back and forth on whether you need the car at the carwash to wash the car. Undoubtedly people have been passing this set of problems to ai's for months or years and have gotten back either incorrect res…

>It's only because humans came up with a problem, worked with the ai and verified the result that this achievement means anything at all.

Replace ai with human here and that's...just how collaborative research works lol.

Re: Epoch confirms GPT5.4 Pro solved a frontier math open problem

#140

Post by keeda »

Validark wrote: post #33

I have long said I am an AI doubter until AI could print out the answers to hard problems or ones requiring tons of innovation. Assuming this is verified to be correct (not by AI) then I just became a believer. I would like to see a few more AI inventions to know for sure, but wow, it really is a new and exciting world. I really hope we use this intelligence resource to make the world better.

I'm curious as to why you consider this as the benchmark for AI capabilities. Extremely few humans can solve hard problems or do much innovation. The vast majority of knowledge work requires neither of these, and AI has been excelling at that kind of work for a while now.

If your definition of AI requires these things, I think -- despite the extreme fuzziness of all these terms -- that it's closer to what most people consider AGI, or maybe even ASI.

Post reply on HN