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Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

openai.com

441–450 of 1001 posts

Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#441
Gary Marcus' has a good take on this:

https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/openais-amazing-but-vastly...

https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/two-critical-updates-re-as...

Not that there isn't something interesting in here, but lets be clear that we don't have enough information to evaluate this properly. And as always with these labs, BS takes a lot more energy to refute than it does to spread.

Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#442

one of the early premises of how ai takeoff would go was that a system that could solve open problems in advanced mathematics would also discover novel advances in math and computer science that directly unlock drastically better software performance. we are seeing frontier level math breakthroughs (ie performance that would put it in the top 100 or 1000 mathematicians in the world if it were a human, meaning top .00…

I don’t really like AI but let’s stop kidding ourselves, no human mathematician could make progress on a dozen major open problems in a week or two. If you’re measuring it against humans then it is by far the best mathematician to ever live.

Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dign…

> others are in denial about whose living standards are actually going to be uplifted.

I don't know if it is fair to say they're in denial. For my part, I don't expect life to get much better for regular people (especially short term), but that doesn't mean we shouldn't work to try to make it happen.

Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#444
post #360

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…

How do humans "invent knowledge"? Is your argument that the answer to these questions already existed in the training set? Why didn't any human recognize that before?

Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#445

Gary Marcus' has a good take on this: https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/openais-amazing-but-vastly... https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/two-critical-updates-re-as... Not that there isn't something interesting in here, but lets be clear that we don't have enough information to evaluate this properly. And as always with these labs, BS takes a lot more energy to refute than it does to spread.

"Gary Marcus' has a good take "

I think that is an oxymoron.

Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#447

Gary Marcus' has a good take on this: https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/openais-amazing-but-vastly... https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/two-critical-updates-re-as... Not that there isn't something interesting in here, but lets be clear that we don't have enough information to evaluate this properly. And as always with these labs, BS takes a lot more energy to refute than it does to spread.

"Gary Marcus' has a good take " I think that is an oxymoron.

How so? His predictions were accurate so far

Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dign…

Asking questions about policy and values and pushing to have those resolved in positive ways is about as far away from denial as you can get. It’s possibly the only useful thing an ordinary person can do.

What a lot of people want to do, and I’m not saying that you’re one of them, is to assume that a positive outcome is impossible and either do nothing or loudly yell that the world is ending. Neither is particularly useful.

Or, as I said above, others just deny that there’s anything to see here and try to get people to move along.

Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#449
post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Isn't it obvious if AI automates your job away, the AI company is going to reap the economic value, which is going to be less than what you cost, while giving you a pittance as UBI? If you received its full value there wouldn't be any point in anybody replacing you with AI. The only way to win is to wield the AI.

Agreed, a LOT of UBI advocates gloss over the "B" in UBI. If AI increases human productivity overall, the only morally acceptable outcomes (imo) are that everyone's standard of living increases (or at least is the same without having to work) and wealth inequality decreases (if AI is doing ~all the work, there really isn't any sensible justification for some people having significantly more wealth than others). Frankly anything else seems like a recipe for massive social instability.

Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#450
post #96

Replace philosophers for mathematicians and Douglas Adams was spot on again. Whilst current models can't 'intuit' and come up with conjectures, they can certainly disprove some of them very quickly through the kind of grind that humans can't do. I suppose there really are some mathematicians out there today, whose last few years of study, have just been up-ended by this. -- "Yes we are," insisted Majikthise. "We are…

>Whilst current models can't 'intuit That's how they are finding these solutions though, unless we are just going to label intuition as something only humans can do. Like a submarine being unable to swim or whatever that example is.

> "matrices"
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