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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

#471

Post by afro88 »

overgard wrote: post #457
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.

https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/openais-amazing-but-vastly... https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/two-critical-updates-re-as... As always, PR hype. Goalposts have not moved. Guys, please use critical thinking. The haters don't hate by default, we hate because we're gaslit about this stuff every day and it's annoying. Extraordinary claims require proof, and they're not giving us information that would be essential to…

Gary doesn't argue it's hype though. He argues 2 things: other people are getting carried away with the result, and we don't know enough about how it was reached to know where it falls on the impressive scale.

He literally says it's an impressive feat in the second article.

Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#472

Post by f6v »

danparsonson wrote: post #192
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.

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.

> Never understood all this talk about moving goalposts - you understand that's how science works, right?

I agree with the parent that we need to acknowledge that we're at a turning point in history. I lived through some of them (internet, ubiquitous personal computing). But it's somewhat difficult to comprehend the impact of this one for many people.

I do biomedical research at one of the top European research institutions. We're very well-funded, but I can clearly see the gap between us (say, top-100) and top-10. I also realize this gap is going to get so much wider unless we invest heavily in AI access (and I'm not so sure I can sell anything more expensive than $20 Claude subscription to the leadership).

I think people having 6-7 figure SOTA AI budgets will move exponentially faster than those who don't. That makes me worried.

So, for me, it's not a question of recalibrating expectations. We're way past that.

Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#473

Post by HarHarVeryFunny »

Chance-Device wrote: post #448
striking wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The AI companies themselves, who are highly motivated to sell AI as overall positive for society, notwithstanding some security/etc risks, and who have economists on the payroll to think about things like this, do not seem to have found any possible positive outcome to present.

Shane Legg (DeepMind co-founder), one of the more intelligent and thoughtful people you'll find in the industry, could only offer "it's a tough problem - we need to think about it" when recently interviewed by Hannah Fry.

On the surface the most likely outcome for AI allowed to replace jobs is extraordinarily negative, especially since it is a general capability technology, not a specific one where displaced workers can just move to another field. Once AI becomes more capable it will be able to do the vast majority of white collar jobs, including any new ones that may appear as a result of AI. As Shane Legg put it, "if your job can be done remotely, sitting in front of a computer, then it can probably be replaced by AI".

Not only does AI threaten to replace ALL the white collar jobs, but it is rapidly going after blue collar (factory jobs, driving jobs) and pink collar ones (Japanese robotics for elder-care) as well.

If a positive outcome (which doesn't include putting displaced workers on welfare - UBI) is possible, then it sure would be nice to hear it, and the silence from the AI companies, and government for that matter, is deafening.

Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#474

Post by jrflo »

petilon wrote: post #231

At what point can we say AGI has been achieved? What is the test? AI is solving mathematical problems that humans have not been able to solve for decades. Is that not enough? Sam Altman has said "If superintelligence can't discover novel physics, I don't think it's a superintelligence." Is that the test? How far away are we from AI discovering novel physics? It seems within reach.

I think we previously assumed that AGI would need to come before superintelligence, but it kind of seems like that's wrong? Super intelligence in a narrow field has arguably already arrived (solving problems that were previously unsolved), but we are still pretty far behind human abilities in things like spatial reasoning or computer use.

Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#475

Post by lackoftactics »

scarmig wrote: post #416
8note wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

to an extent zitron is saying its not useful, but as a more nuanced opinion, "ai is not cost effective, nor is it improving profits or revenue"

From a random article I grabbed of his ( https://www.wheresyoured.at/subprimeai/ ): "it isn't clear whether generative AI actually provides much business value at all" "cannot seem to find a product that people will pay for, in part because the results are so mediocre" "Last week, we got our first real, definitive glimpse of what’s around that corner that future. And boy, was it underwhelming." "OpenAI claims that o1…

Yep, he is a PR stunt guy, and the number of videos that come up when you type Ed Zitron into YouTube should tell you how many people are eager to feed their cognitive biases.

Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#476

Post by bluerooibos »

overgard wrote: post #457
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.

https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/openais-amazing-but-vastly... https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/two-critical-updates-re-as... As always, PR hype. Goalposts have not moved. Guys, please use critical thinking. The haters don't hate by default, we hate because we're gaslit about this stuff every day and it's annoying. Extraordinary claims require proof, and they're not giving us information that would be essential to…

Gary Marcus has been moving the goalposts since day 1. The guy is a psychologist. Why would anyone care what a psychologist has to say about AI? He's likely made good money from constantly moving the goalposts and being a denier, due to the publicity he gets.

Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#477

Post by [deleted] »

WarmWash wrote: post #430
c7b wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#478

Post by gpm »

an0malous wrote: post #439
gpm wrote: post #327

Henry Yuen's (whose work problem 6 builds on) comments on this are worth reading IMO: https://bsky.app/profile/henryyuen.bsky.social/post/3ms2jpch...

It sounds like he hasn't verified the results of a problem that he has personally worked on, so how many of these problems have actually been verified?

I mean, they're verified in the sense that the lean proof checks out... and presumably OpenAI read them.

Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#479

Post by azinman2 »

bubblemoth wrote: post #464
Chance-Device wrote: post #406

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…

What pressure is there to push for any of these changes? I see AI advocates discussing the concept of UBI, but I can't imagine a world where the United States would ever pass this sort of legislation. I mean, congress can barely pass a budget each year. If you are correct, I expect corporations to reap massive profits while most Americans try to find a way to survive in a world where they are obsolete.

I also don’t understand why UBI is desirable. Putting everyone on welfare means everyone is poor. This won’t end well, and it’s certainly not the case that 99% of the population will let a tiny number of people remove their income in favor of pennies for all. Political violence will come first, easily.

Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#480

Post by fasterik »

rirze wrote: post #450
WarmWash wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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"

Saying that AI is "matrices" is like saying human cognition is "neurons." Maybe true at some level, but it's a low-level implementation detail. The important part of a language model is the function that maps tokens to contextual embeddings. You could compute this function using analog computing, biological neurons, or any other substrate.
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