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A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

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Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#171

Post by MattPalmer1086 »

_the_inflator wrote: post #142
ziotom78 wrote: post #62

I am a physics professor and often use Gemini to check my papers. It is a formidable tool: it was able to find a clerical error (a missing imaginary unit in a complex mathematical expression) I was not able to find for days, and it often underlines connections between concepts and ideas that I overlooked. However, it often makes conceptual errors that I can spot only because I have good knowledge of the topic I am di…

I agree and put it this way: LLMs sound so convincing presenting you the work it does rose colored and promising to give you more if you keep going. There is a 50/50 chance that it turns out to be right or letting you jump of the cliff. Only the trip stays the same beautiful 5 star plus travel. Also, spotting an error and telling LLM makes it in most cases worse, because the LLM wants to please you and goes on to apo…

Reusing the same prompt several times is something I've started doing too. The contrast is often illuminating.

In one case, it made a thoroughly convincing argument that an approach was justified. The second time it made exactly the opposite argument, which was equally compelling.

I now see LLMs as persuasion machines.

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#172

Post by Computer0 »

nerdsniper wrote: post #157
NotOscarWilde wrote: post #11

As a TCS assistant professor from Eastern Europe, I always am a little jealous of the biggest names in math having such an easy access to the expensive, long thinking models. Paying for Pro from any of my current academic budgets is completely ouf of the field of reality here -- all budgets tend to have restricted uses and software payments fit into very few categories. Effectively, I'd have to ask for a brand new gr…

I believe ChatGPT 5.5 Pro access is available for $100/month, is that an unrealistic level of expense for someone in your position and geography? Even if the university won't pay for it, it seems you'd like to use this tool for your own goals. I'm not trying to shame here, just curious whether this is completely unattainable for most researchers in your area.

It appears that in their country someone in their position makes about 50k usd annually. I make a similar amount in my country and cannot justify it.

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#173

Post by zkmon »

>> but it was definitely a non-trivial extension of those ideas, and for a PhD student to find that extension it would be necessary to invest quite a bit of time digesting Isaac’s paper

The "non-trivial" is for human abilities. The weights lifted by a crane are also "non-trivial". People keep getting amazed at machine's abilities. Just like a radio telescope can see things humans can't, microscope can see the detail humans can't, we need not be amazed. The sensory perception of patterns is at different level for AI. It's a machine.

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#174

Post by eterm »

MrDrDr wrote: post #166

> "Even though I can motivate it in retrospect, ChatGPT’s idea to use h^2-dissociated sets to control relations of order at most h feels quite ingenious. As far as I can tell, this idea is completely original." The question that keep bothering me is can an LLM generate an idea that is truly novel? How would/could that actually happen? But then that leads to the question - what are we actually doing when we think? Per…

My own take, and it's veering into the Philosophy of Mathematics, but there's a debate about whether Mathematics is "Invented" or "Discovered".

If it's "invented", then it requires ingenuity.

If it's "discovered", then it was always already there, just waiting for the right connections to be made for it to be uncovered and represented in a way we can understand.

Invention requires ingenuity, but discovery does not. So if LLMs can generate truly novel mathematics, for me that settles it that mathematics is indeed discovered, as LLMs are quite capable of discovery yet I don't consider them possible of invention.

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#175

Post by jasfi »

MrDrDr wrote: post #166

> "Even though I can motivate it in retrospect, ChatGPT’s idea to use h^2-dissociated sets to control relations of order at most h feels quite ingenious. As far as I can tell, this idea is completely original." The question that keep bothering me is can an LLM generate an idea that is truly novel? How would/could that actually happen? But then that leads to the question - what are we actually doing when we think? Per…

It's about the ability to combine ideas in novel ways, without breaking the rules in relevant frameworks. Sometimes the idea may even be to contradict existing theories where they are weak.

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#176

Post by humanfromearth9 »

MrDrDr wrote: post #166

> "Even though I can motivate it in retrospect, ChatGPT’s idea to use h^2-dissociated sets to control relations of order at most h feels quite ingenious. As far as I can tell, this idea is completely original." The question that keep bothering me is can an LLM generate an idea that is truly novel? How would/could that actually happen? But then that leads to the question - what are we actually doing when we think? Per…

For my paper about ME/CFS, I let an LLM integrate lots of findings of other scientific papers. Then I ask the LLM to "creatively brainstorm", given all we know of ME/CFS and the newly integrated paper, to generate new hypotheses, treatment ideas or any other kind of insight it can think of.

This works really well.

Now, it's clear that I have no idea how much of this is something we would consider new and original, and how much is a kind of systematic, but not novel, easy of thinking.

What I couldn't do so far is get an LLM to generate a truly new maths theory, with new abstract concepts and dimensions and points of view. The kind that is not just a combination of existing theories and logic.

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#177

Post by quantummagic »

port11 wrote: post #165
ziotom78 wrote: post #62

I am a physics professor and often use Gemini to check my papers. It is a formidable tool: it was able to find a clerical error (a missing imaginary unit in a complex mathematical expression) I was not able to find for days, and it often underlines connections between concepts and ideas that I overlooked. However, it often makes conceptual errors that I can spot only because I have good knowledge of the topic I am di…

Gemini’s smug and over-confident “this is the gold standard in 2026” definitely leaves little space for nuance if you don’t know the subject matter. Human students would, hopefully, know they don’t know everything.

> Gemini’s smug...

Anthropomorphizing these systems is dangerous, whether coming from the bullish or bearish perspective. The output is statistically generated by a machine lacking the capability to be smug.

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#178

Post by LiamPowell »

MrDrDr wrote: post #166

> "Even though I can motivate it in retrospect, ChatGPT’s idea to use h^2-dissociated sets to control relations of order at most h feels quite ingenious. As far as I can tell, this idea is completely original." The question that keep bothering me is can an LLM generate an idea that is truly novel? How would/could that actually happen? But then that leads to the question - what are we actually doing when we think? Per…

Trivially the answer is yes by the infinite monkey theorem. If we allow the sampler to pick any token then any stream of arbitrary tokens can be generated. Therefore if an original idea can be represented with written words then a LLM can generate it. That is perhaps not the most satisfying answer, but if you want a better one you'll need to provide a function that determines if an idea is original.

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#179

Post by 5555watch »

energy123 wrote: post #160
wood_spirit wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chiming in to agree but clarify that the latest sota models are no better than Gemini. I put my stuff through several sota models and round robin them in adversarial collaboration and they are all useful even though, fundamentally, they don’t “understand” anything. But they are super useful delegates as long as deciding on the problem and approach and solution all sits safely in your head so you can challenge them an…

Basically all Erdos problems that get solved with AI use ChatGPT 5.* Pro, not Gemini/Opus.

I would guess it's because ChatGPT Pro allows for 80min "think". I've never had even remotely similar think times with Gemini Deep Think. It's generally around 10-15min for math problems, and get increasingly shorter for continued interactions.

Re: A recent experience with ChatGPT 5.5 Pro

#180

Post by Jtarii »

quantummagic wrote: post #177
port11 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gemini’s smug and over-confident “this is the gold standard in 2026” definitely leaves little space for nuance if you don’t know the subject matter. Human students would, hopefully, know they don’t know everything.

> Gemini’s smug... Anthropomorphizing these systems is dangerous, whether coming from the bullish or bearish perspective. The output is statistically generated by a machine lacking the capability to be smug.

>Anthropomorphizing these systems is dangerous

That ship has sailed. Humans will anthropomorphize a rock if you put googly eyes on it.

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