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GPT-5.6 used a prompt to close a 30-year gap in convex optimization

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Re: GPT-5.6 used a prompt to close a 30-year gap in convex optimization

#281

This is all a depressing and bleak future that I don’t look forward to. One solution is to ban LLM’s, to artificially create a demand for human thought, that just feels like living in an artificially constructed zoo. Another solution is humans don’t do anything that AI can do better , / doesn’t need the human touch. So I suppose we will all become artists, sportsmen or politicians, the only jobs that will remain exce…

Why is this depressing and bleak? No one is stopping you from doing math if that's what you want to do.

Should I ban table saws because they make people too good at woodworking? Should we ban right-angles?

This line of thought doesn't lead anywhere fruitful.

Re: GPT-5.6 used a prompt to close a 30-year gap in convex optimization

#282

I know a bit about this field. This conjecture reads as somewhat more niche than the cyclic double cover conjecture recently proved by OpenAI, but nevertheless represents a real contribution. You want to know how long it takes to solve an optimization problem, in this case over convex, lipschitz functions. (The restriction to a spherical domain is not really a restriction, you can just change variables for any bounde…

[flagged]

I'm sorry this comment didn't sit well with you. My goal was to induce discussion by describing the claimed result (which was buried in the post), not to discourage it.

If you have more specific feedback on what you found distasteful, I'd be happy to hear it.

Re: GPT-5.6 used a prompt to close a 30-year gap in convex optimization

#283
post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans just want to be able to work and feed their families. Notice how this is something that is never addressed for example in Asimov's writings where robots do everything. How do people do anything to be able to afford these robots? How do Solarians make money to maintain their massively gigantic estates? It is never explained, but we always jump straight to the "robots do everything, everything is free, nobody wo…

We're going to have to (collectively at some point) decide that we shouldn't tie survival to working. Whether that's UBI, or Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism, or UBS, or some AI managed economy, or some other such thing, we need to decide that "hey, we don't want to tied survival to output under our current system." That's really the Rubicon we have to cross, and there are a LOT of people who can't really c…

Oh! Damn! Stupid me! "We have to collectively decide this", when is the meeting to vote on that again? When is the last time we all decided something collectively?

WTF does the pandemic have to do with this? "dark time", oh yeah, people stuck at home watching Netflix, what an incommensurable suffering!

Buddy, I can admire the naive childish optimism to a degree, but come on. "We just have to all decide". Do you live in a Disney movie?

Re: GPT-5.6 used a prompt to close a 30-year gap in convex optimization

#284
post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll point out that "does not work" is not the same as "not as efficient" :) But it does seem the Adam paper had an error. I think that Nesterov's first order method is the most efficient general first order algorithm on convex problems, so anything else is in some sense worse. (Edit: removed incorrect ADAM comment.)

Yours' "not as efficient" in [2] means that, sometimes, ADAM "does not work." Look at figure 2, ADAM literally does not work in the case of "true model."

Yes, apologies, I didn't read the articles you linked before posting this. I did update the comment.

I don't think this changes the point, which is that most optimization methods used in AI owe a substantial intellectual debt to convex optimization theory.

Re: GPT-5.6 used a prompt to close a 30-year gap in convex optimization

#285
post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has always been the case though that "another avenue of human craftsmanship has been taken over by the machines." It's good if we can have robots building things instead of having humans slumped over a workbench in a sweatshop piecing things together. It's good if we can have LLMs spitting out code rather than CS grads working 15 hour days at fintech startups or whatever. The conditions were never (ever) good be…

I admire the naivety. I'm sure CS grads are delighted...

Why the ad hominem? I mean, seriously, you think I haven't been "in the trenches?"

Dude, I'm nearly 40. I've seen the shit. When I was flying for a living, literal close friends died because of the results of avarice.

Dream big dude! This constant "doom and gloom" narrative is toxic to your ability to flourish. I have been there, I understand the urge to doom and gloom, but we make the world we want to live in. We do. We choose it.

What world do you want to live in? What is your "optimal" version of the future? How do we get there? What steps would we have to take to make it a reality?

If your vision of the future is "oh, like 10 years ago before $problem_du_jour" then you're already off to a bad start because we ain't going back. There's no regulation that will actually change anything materially (seriously, you think the people getting rich off all this stuff in Congress will voluntarily shoot themselves in the foot?), there's no way to go but forward, so how do we proceed?

I want to live in The Culture, or something like it if it's possible. So, let's start building it and ask permission later.

Re: GPT-5.6 used a prompt to close a 30-year gap in convex optimization

#286
post #14

Crazy how intelligence is cheap, efficient and commonplace now. We humans better refocusing our energy on our core values/principles, given most of our skills are becoming irrelevant

If it were commonplace, there wouldn't be a post and discussion about it. Cheap? Arguable - while it didn't cost thousands, it wasn't free. Cheap is in the eye of the beholder. Efficient...How do we even measure that? The massive infrastructure and training to take a product to the point where someone could do this is massive. Ignoring everything behind the scenes and acting like one session and result is the whole p…

I mostly agree, these are things that couldn't or weren't solved with abundant capital at all, and now they are being solved

it went from not having a price, to having one, and we are trying to retroactively transpose economic viability or economic existence to it from some parallel and prior time.

Re: GPT-5.6 used a prompt to close a 30-year gap in convex optimization

#287
post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right!? Like imagine we could use this stuff to solve world hunger, develop robots to clean up the oceans, or colonize space? People are all “shucks how am I going to be able to justify my career at $job” and are missing the bigger opportunity. Such a lack of imagination I see…

There is no lack of imagination here, there is realism. You think you display "imagination" by just regurgitating all the tired tropes of old science fiction? Oh wow! Robots to clean the ocean! How novel! Nobody has ever thought about this! The reality is nobody is going to build robots to clean the ocean because there is no money to be made. There will be robots to clean rich people's pools, sure. And it will put po…

I can see (given that you've responded to a few of my points here), that you care about this enough to respond.

What if money wasn't a thing? What if that wasn't the only incentive in the economy? What if there were other ways to balance supply and demand curves (which is basically the principle use for money) so we could reduce shortages, etc.

Dream big man, I'm serious! And who cares if there is no money to be made? Like, what are you (individually you) doing to create the world you want to live in? What world do you even want to live in?

Re: GPT-5.6 used a prompt to close a 30-year gap in convex optimization

#288

I know a bit about this field. This conjecture reads as somewhat more niche than the cyclic double cover conjecture recently proved by OpenAI, but nevertheless represents a real contribution. You want to know how long it takes to solve an optimization problem, in this case over convex, lipschitz functions. (The restriction to a spherical domain is not really a restriction, you can just change variables for any bounde…

[flagged]

I did not see _alternator_'s comment as asinine. I like a venue where people who have some expertise feel comfortable enough to share it, and are not criticized for doing so

Re: GPT-5.6 used a prompt to close a 30-year gap in convex optimization

#289
post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans just want to be able to work and feed their families. Notice how this is something that is never addressed for example in Asimov's writings where robots do everything. How do people do anything to be able to afford these robots? How do Solarians make money to maintain their massively gigantic estates? It is never explained, but we always jump straight to the "robots do everything, everything is free, nobody wo…

We're going to have to (collectively at some point) decide that we shouldn't tie survival to working. Whether that's UBI, or Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism, or UBS, or some AI managed economy, or some other such thing, we need to decide that "hey, we don't want to tied survival to output under our current system." That's really the Rubicon we have to cross, and there are a LOT of people who can't really c…

[deleted]

Re: GPT-5.6 used a prompt to close a 30-year gap in convex optimization

#290
post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right!? Like imagine we could use this stuff to solve world hunger, develop robots to clean up the oceans, or colonize space? People are all “shucks how am I going to be able to justify my career at $job” and are missing the bigger opportunity. Such a lack of imagination I see…

There is no lack of imagination here, there is realism. You think you display "imagination" by just regurgitating all the tired tropes of old science fiction? Oh wow! Robots to clean the ocean! How novel! Nobody has ever thought about this! The reality is nobody is going to build robots to clean the ocean because there is no money to be made. There will be robots to clean rich people's pools, sure. And it will put po…

"let's slow everything down because we haven't figured out the resource appropriation aspect, yet"

there will always be disruption and frictions, 頑張って ください

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