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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

#591

Post by righthand »

uh_uh wrote: post #119
dist-epoch wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you want to bring cost into this argument. Even if the cost was $1 mil for these 10 problems, that's maybe 10-20 math researchers for a year. Do you really think that if you paid that to humans, they will deliver the same results?

It is comical at this point. Some people just can not stand the thought of AI actually delivering and are trying to find whatever ways to discredit it.

Entirely comical too that some people can not stand the thought of people poking very big comulent holes in the claims of AI delivering what it claims to deliver. As if having skepticism is some how a way to discredit a person.

Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#592

Post by 2001zhaozhao »

gste wrote: post #573
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.

People will be broken out of their denial by actual economic growth. That's what this is all meant to be for... I think we might start seeing some surprising numbers.

Would something like "services deflation" even show up in the numbers? That's what I'd expect to happen first

Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#593

Post by sothatsit »

dominotw wrote: post #566
sothatsit wrote: post #535

People argue whether we are at y-5, y, or y+5, meanwhile we seem to be on a y=2^x exponential that keeps delivering more and more impressive results. The most interesting question to me is what will be consumed by the exponential like math seems to be undergoing, and what won’t. Writing has been quite stubborn, but I’ve noticed Fable to be quite a big step up there. How about politics? Will we develop new ways to let…

> The most interesting question to me is what will be consumed by the exponential like math seems to be undergoing, and what won’t. Writing has been quite stubborn, isn't it clearly split between verifiable not verifiable ? what is interesting about that question.

I do not think it is so clear.

Programming has verifiable and non-verifiable aspects. Competitive programming, passing tests, and performance can all be verified. But translating English requirements into actual software, software architecture, taste, or UI design cannot. And yet over the last couple years we’ve seen huge lifts in all of these areas, not just the verifiable ones.

Verifiable areas I think are clearly seeing the most improvement, or are the quickest to see improvement. But we are seeing lots of progress in non-verifiable areas as well.

How much of the non-verifiable progress is a function of labs purchasing expert data vs. the models improving with compute is maybe another interesting question, but fundamentally I don’t see spend on expert data as something that can’t grow if AI revenues keep growing as well. And as models get better taste they can also help filter and generate new synthetic data for their next versions to train on. The limits of this approach are not so clear.

Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#594

Post by zahlman »

ultimatefan1 wrote: post #118

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…

> but it seems less likely to me than before that the types of math/science discoveries will explicitly unlock better software performance.

You seem to overlook a simpler barrier. To make these advances, they have to be possible. A 15% improvement in GPU kernels doesn't evidence that significantly more improvement has been left on the table.

Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#595

Post by criddell »

Legend2440 wrote: post #504
fhfncjcc wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The models are frequently getting worse at items that they aren’t being benchmarked for — and that’s happening more and more over time! Other people in other fields aren’t idiots, they are accurately perceiving the fact that these models are being hyper optimized for our industry, and are becoming less capable in other domains over time. Models of the same scale are massively worse at writing a broad variety of style…

Proof? In my experience modern models are better at all tasks than models from two years ago, especially complex multi-step tasks.

Do any of the big AI companies have a model that are good at tasks that require learning?

For example, every day people teach teenagers how to drive and with only dozens of hours of practice, they are on the road.

Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#596

Post by Marha01 »

HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #554
orangecat wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do not seem to have found any possible positive outcome to present See "Machines of Loving Grace" by Dario Amodei: https://darioamodei.com/essay/machines-of-loving-grace .

This seems more a fantasy than a considered likely outcome. He basically admits that humans will eventually mostly all be out of a job, replaced by AI, but then says (Gemini's summary) that there will be: "Massive Economic Abundance: Because AI will exponentially grow the total economic pie, overall resource scarcity will diminish. The fundamental challenge shifts from producing wealth to distributing wealth." So how…

> What is step 3?

"Massive Economic Abundance" implies massive increase in produced goods. This implies massive deflation, ceteris paribus. So step 3 could be simply printing money to pay for UBI. Deflation from AI productivity increase and inflation from UBI money printing will cancel out.

Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#597

Post by righthand »

evenhash wrote: post #431
amazingamazing wrote: post #137

Can’t wait for this stuff to have quality of life increases for the average person. So far all I see is that AI has made owning a computer more expensive, made some jobs redundant, increased spam and distrust with questionable authenticity of content and of course made some Americans very rich.

Not everyone works for Evil Corp. I work in the public sector and my work supports public health and safety initiatives. AI has allowed my team to get much more done than we would have otherwise which improves the quality of life of the people in my community. So I would like to counter your cynicism with a “YMMV” depending on who you work for.

Are you just automating lab reporting and results faster? That doesn’t exactly improve the health of others, a faster lab does not cure an ailment or provide a better cure.

Like cool my lung xray only took minutes to determine if I have a lesion instead of a week or a few days, but I still have cancer.

Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#598

Post by MattGaiser »

caughtinthought wrote: post #481
dash2 wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it doesn't help average people, why do millions of them pay for it?

Ask DraftKings?

Gambling has consistently ranked above family for many in human history, so while it hurts a third party, the people involved genuinely believe in it.

Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#599

Post by zahlman »

cvak wrote: post #368
asdfologist wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike math, software is constrained by the physical world.

In what sense?

For example, pi can be computed to arbitrarily many digits, but could only even in principle be accurately represented with physical objects to a precision that many humans could memorize easily. This is thanks to physical constraints such as "diameter of the observable universe" and "Planck length", at a minimum.

Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#600

Post by bubblemoth »

Chance-Device wrote: post #546
HarHarVeryFunny wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tou…

UBI probably is the positive outcome, though it may not seem like it to begin with. Initially it will likely be stigmatised and under-resourced, but as a larger proportion of people move out of work and onto UBI that stigma will drop and the resources should grow. Eventually UBI will be the norm, and if the living standards of a person on UBI is as good as yours or mine today, that will be an enormous win for everyon…

> Eventually UBI will be the norm

I see comments like this tossed around a lot, but what makes you say this? Don't you think its more likely that most people end up in poverty?

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