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Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

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Re: Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

#251

Post by redox99 »

dehsge wrote: post #236
redox99 wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of going into a long technical argument of why your description of LLMs is flawed, I'll go straight to the point, because people keep moving the goal posts. What exact problem would need to be solved by LLMs to convince you that they DO discover novel solutions?

unify general relativity with quantum mechanics. The continuum hypothesis. The traveling salesman problem in polynomial time.

I think it's cool how in a decade we went from

"Neural networks will never be able to understand this sentence that's obvious to humans"

to

"LLMs must be able to solve problems that humanity hasn't been able to after almost a century, and that might even be unsolvable"

Re: Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

#252

Post by hodgehog11 »

glaslong wrote: post #226
cout wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure you aren't underestimating human capacity for stupidity?

We might be undervaluing consistency. You can plan for reliably stupid. Harder to rely on Often Smart, but Unpredictably Stupid.

I supervise quite a few Masters students. In my particular setting, believe me, LLM stupid for the top three chatbots is easier to work with than real human stupid now. We passed that threshold earlier this year.

Re: Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

#254

Post by roywiggins »

redox99 wrote: post #251
dehsge wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

unify general relativity with quantum mechanics. The continuum hypothesis. The traveling salesman problem in polynomial time.

I think it's cool how in a decade we went from "Neural networks will never be able to understand this sentence that's obvious to humans" to "LLMs must be able to solve problems that humanity hasn't been able to after almost a century, and that might even be unsolvable"

it can operate at the level of a mere mathematics professor, who everyone knows are barely conscious, basically automatons. wake me up when it's Einstein

Re: Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

#255

Post by jesse_dot_id »

Huntsecker wrote: post #163

Anyone else draw similarities with this and the artists and authors who complained when gen ai first came out. I think a lot of people don't realise the disruption ai will cause to many industries, until its directly impacting them, basically personal fable at scale ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_fable ).

I think the disruptions are temporary. Using AI still takes someone's time and the skill can be honed, which means there will be people specializing in using AI in different ways that are better than what someone just picking it up can do. It's just a reset on skill floors but the people with talent will rapidly regain ground and find their way to the ceiling again. The ones who learn the most, the fastest, will probably end up being worth more than they were previously.

I don't think any of these AI layoffs are actually because AI replaced a human. I think a lot of the layoffs are actually just due to a faltering economy or greedy companies trying desperately to get a piece of the pie, so they're sacrificing their long game for short term gambles. I don't think that's going to pay off for them.

Re: Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

#256

Post by andai »

> “The tech industry proceeds in accordance with commercial logic, which is antithetical to the values of mathematics,”

I briefly studied at a pure math department. We were learning linear algebra and I found the symbol heavy, proof oriented approach very difficult and unintuitive. But when I squinted at the diagrams I realized, oh wait, this actually has dozens of practical applications! Across dozens of different fields! How fantastic!

And the textbook, for some reason, chose to mention precisely none of them. Which I found quite disappointing, because it made the whole thing seem quite abstract (which it actually wasn't), and made it harder to understand.

I mentioned this to my colleagues, who became extremely upset, and informed me that I was in the wrong department.

Re: Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

#257

Post by andai »

> Mathematics produces not only a body of results, but also understanding, clarity, and judgment among the communities of mathematicians who have shaped them, often in the context of their own autonomously guided research. This expert knowledge is essential, both to effectively use mathematics, and to continue to articulate new and significant research questions.

In a word, the job of the mathematics department is not only to produce mathematics, but mathematicians.

Similarly, the output of programming is not only a program, but also a programmer. It is you.

Outsourcing the work deprives you of who you become by writing it.

Re: Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

#258

Post by kamaal »

andai wrote: post #257

> Mathematics produces not only a body of results, but also understanding, clarity, and judgment among the communities of mathematicians who have shaped them, often in the context of their own autonomously guided research. This expert knowledge is essential, both to effectively use mathematics, and to continue to articulate new and significant research questions. In a word, the job of the mathematics department is no…

>>Similarly, the output of programming is not only a program, but also a programmer. It is you.

This can be said about pretty much any job on earth.

By that definition nothing should ever be automated.

Everything thinks they are special, actually no one is. You become special by being rare. Find something that can be done by no one or only a scant few.

Re: Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

#259

Post by delusional »

kamaal wrote: post #258
andai wrote: post #257

> Mathematics produces not only a body of results, but also understanding, clarity, and judgment among the communities of mathematicians who have shaped them, often in the context of their own autonomously guided research. This expert knowledge is essential, both to effectively use mathematics, and to continue to articulate new and significant research questions. In a word, the job of the mathematics department is no…

>>Similarly, the output of programming is not only a program, but also a programmer. It is you. This can be said about pretty much any job on earth. By that definition nothing should ever be automated. Everything thinks they are special, actually no one is. You become special by being rare. Find something that can be done by no one or only a scant few.

> Everything thinks they are special, actually no one is.

That sounds very nice, but isn't true. Most of the people I know, myself included, don't consider themselves special broadly. They're special in their own community, but not globally.

Re: Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

#260

Post by daemin »

nyxtom wrote: post #192

For every interesting problem AI solves there are a long tail of really dumb things that AI performs that humans would never do. Some days I am in awe of one-shot magic eight-ball output and other days I'm so frustrated by the sheer stupidity of what it produces. It remains to be seen whether that long tail of stupidity can ever be resolved in the current form of LLMs.

Very much like gambling, you can hit the jackpot, or just have continuous near (and far) misses.
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