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Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

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Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#421

Post by fixedpointsnake »

ck2 wrote: post #360
Chance-Device wrote: post #105

Pretty cool. The impact of AI is getting undeniable, there aren’t many positions left to move the goalposts to at this stage, next they’ll have to be outside the stadium entirely. The sooner people can be broken out of their denial about all this the better, and we can start actually taking it seriously.

"AI" has limits in that it cannot invent knowledge, it can only distill and search for patterns in existing knowledge not sure how many will get this reference but "AI" for science and math is like super-shoes for runners at first we are blown away by the impossible improvements including sub-2-hour realworld marathon and every other PR/CR/WR is dialed down but then the improvements slow and reach a stall point becau…

I agree. The most likely scenario is that this is just a "new normal" lift that is percolating through human endeavors and will saturate at some point. For example, the whole cyber-security bruhaha should ultimately resolve into higher standards for code published -- we can now cheaply find and fix a whole slew of minor bugs that weren't worth our time before.

The fact we see a lift is not the same as evidence that the lift is unbounded.

The lift being finite is supported by the fact improvements have come at the edges: improvements from human feedback, improvements in harnesses, improvements on model compatibility with harnesses, improvements in inference efficiency with new architectures, etc. If we were just training better models from scratch that would be one thing, but we are just making better use of a tool we've developed.

Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#422

Post by scotty79 »

enraged_camel wrote: post #371
gowld wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are doing is "motte and bailey". The motte is "AI useful". The bailey is "Singularity is nigh".

>> The motte is "AI useful". The bailey is "Singularity is nigh". But there are people like Ed Zitron, frequently posted and cited here, who disagree even with the former.

I think Ed Zitron is mentioned just because his name is Zitron. He just repeats ad nauseam opinions concentrated around one simple, very boring pole on a wild and interesting landscape of emerging reality. Anybody could be doing that. A lot of people do that. Yet no other is named Zitron. And that's why I heard name Ed Zitron hundred times. That's how you become a voice of (a part of) the generation. Just have a memorable name and repeat the same opinion over and over that people can flock around comfortably. Content is irrelevant.

Personally I prefer to follow explorers rather than swamp-sitters.

Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#423

Post by lacy_tinpot »

Chance-Device wrote: post #183
antirez wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not at the top as it is actively flagged by people that can't psychologically cope with the advances of AI. Hacker News is no longer a web site of an elite.

> people that can't psychologically cope with the advances of AI Yes. And there are many of them. I wonder what would help them come to terms with it. Seriously, people are going to be grieving over this. Loss of identity, loss of social standing, ideas of entire future lives that will now never happen. The greatest crime people may hold AI guilty of is taking away their dreams.

It's given many more an opportunity to fulfill their dreams.

Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#424

Post by claytongulick »

NitpickLawyer wrote: post #198
danparsonson wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never understood all this talk about moving goalposts - you understand that's how science works, right? We improve, we learn, we recalibrate our expectations based on what we've learned. If we never "moved the goalposts", we'd be stuck scoring the same goals over and over.

> We improve, we learn, we recalibrate our expectations based on what we've learned. That's not what people mean when they say "moving the goalposts". It means that people are adamant that something wasn't important/hard/impressive once the "AI" solves it. And then they come up with another thing that needs to be solved in order to prove it is important/hard/impressive. And once that happens, they do it again. And ag…

> And then they come up with another thing that needs to be solved in order to prove it is important/hard/impressive. And once that happens, they do it again. And again. That's what "moving the goalposts" means.

The fundamental argument that I've personally made since the early days of this is that LLMs are not reasoning, in the way that word is commonly understood.

There are lots of reasons why that argument needs to evolve that could certainly appear to be "moving the goalposts", but let's take an example.

A lot of AIs were tripped up by the question "Should I walk or drive 50m to the carwash?" Several folks liked to use that as an example that illustrates that LLMs aren't reasoning, but as the models have been trained on that specific example, it's of course less useful. An AI can mostly nail it now.

So a different example is needed. A new demonstration of how these things fail at basic reasoning a child can do.

Did I move the goalposts? I don't think so. The fundamental argument stays the same. It's not hard to find lots of examples that trip up LLMs, because they are what they are: statistical inference machines. Nothing more and nothing less.

Useful, sure. But also commonly misapplied to areas for which they are inappropriate solutions.

Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#425

Post by logicchains »

c7b wrote: post #374
Chance-Device wrote: post #105

Pretty cool. The impact of AI is getting undeniable, there aren’t many positions left to move the goalposts to at this stage, next they’ll have to be outside the stadium entirely. The sooner people can be broken out of their denial about all this the better, and we can start actually taking it seriously.

And what does taking it seriously entail?

Realistically it means trying to start a small business of some sort, because AI is hugely advantageous to business owners and disadvantageous to workers. And it's something AIs can't do unless they get legal personhood, which may well not happen any time soon.

Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#426

Post by striking »

Chance-Device wrote: post #406
c7b wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what does taking it seriously entail?

In the near term handling the transition. Jobs will be lost, careers ended, people won’t be able to reskill quickly enough. At the same time AI is an enormous opportunity to uplift living standards, but nobody has the logistics of this figured out. We need to figure out how to restructure the global economy. How does UBI work internationally, if the AI companies are taking revenue in the US? What’s the tax base for i…

I think this too is a kind of denial. As in, while some are in denial about the usefulness of AI, others are in denial about whose living standards are actually going to be uplifted.

And it's sad, really, because I think these two groups would make a great pairing if they could stop arguing against one another for a moment. They'll both be impacted about as much and probably have the same ultimate goals (to lead dignified lives).

But it seems these days everyone is more interested in Kayfabe and feeling like they're in the right than working together, so maybe I should just keep quiet rather than attract the ire of both groups...

Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#427

Post by twister2920 »

c7b wrote: post #374
Chance-Device wrote: post #105

Pretty cool. The impact of AI is getting undeniable, there aren’t many positions left to move the goalposts to at this stage, next they’ll have to be outside the stadium entirely. The sooner people can be broken out of their denial about all this the better, and we can start actually taking it seriously.

And what does taking it seriously entail?

[dead]

Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#428

Post by jrflo »

bryan0 wrote: post #414

I think there's another interesting story here about how this was apparently moderately flagged and triggered the flame-war detector which kept the story off the front page of HN 2 days ago[0]. I think people are having a hard time processing this information rationally(?) What can we do to make conversations around these incredibly exciting and important topics more constructive? HN is where I expect to read expert…

I think that HN is particularly negative towards AI because the vast majority of users here will have their prestigious CS careers disrupted by AI advances. So, there's an inherent negative bias towards this news.

I for one am really fascinated by AI's advances in science and math and would like to talk about it somewhere without the constant flamewars...

Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#429

Post by derbOac »

simonw wrote: post #274

The GitHub repo with the Lean formalizations just came out a couple of hours ago: https://github.com/openai/ten-proofs It also links to a paper written by an LLM where the model "reconstructs how the proof came together" based on the unpublished reasoning traces: https://cdn.openai.com/pdf/reasoning-walkthroughs.pdf I wish they'd publish the prompts though!

I like the Lean formalizations — I hadn't thought seriously of asking for that before but might try it with some stuff I've been working on.

Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#430

Post by WarmWash »

c7b wrote: post #374
Chance-Device wrote: post #105

Pretty cool. The impact of AI is getting undeniable, there aren’t many positions left to move the goalposts to at this stage, next they’ll have to be outside the stadium entirely. The sooner people can be broken out of their denial about all this the better, and we can start actually taking it seriously.

And what does taking it seriously entail?

The human zoo where the top ~250,000k humans live in a "human utopia" and the AI provides while mostly focusing on whatever it decides it's own goals are.

Humanity survives (but we reading this probably don't), the AI treats the living humans like the Emperor's favorite pets (probably a pretty good life), and then the AI does whatever else it deems important.

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