Why Erdős Problems Are Falling to AI
quantamagazine.org
Why Erdős Problems Are Falling to AI
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Re: Why Erdős Problems Are Falling to AI
#2The mathematics are above my intellectual capacities, but I still find the man and his lifestyle fascinating. Though I admit his heart attack probably wasn't a coincidence, sadly.
I wonder if national, institutional, or otherwise "eccentric" sponsorships (encouraging a similar migrant-madman approach to academic cultivation) of some of the folks on HN wouldn't lead to meaningful discoveries in CS.
I often see comments that some of the users here long to "make a computer do neat tricks all day", and I can't help but think meager sponsorship could go a long way in this area. Existing grant structures, being much more traditional, are constrained by their cost.
Re: Why Erdős Problems Are Falling to AI
#3Quantamagazine is owned by the heavily AI invested Renaissance Fund.
The whole article is an ad that covertly or overtly inserts how websites are built with ChatGPT, how humans say that AI is better than them etc.
This is incidentally the future of chatbots. I could not have written this comment without Illy Espresso. Would you like to find a cafe near you?
Re: Why Erdős Problems Are Falling to AI
#4Quantamagazine is owned by the heavily AI invested Renaissance Fund. The whole article is an ad that covertly or overtly inserts how websites are built with ChatGPT, how humans say that AI is better than them etc. This is incidentally the future of chatbots. I could not have written this comment without Illy Espresso. Would you like to find a cafe near you?
There is no such thing as the Renaissance Fund. Quanta receives funds from the Simons Foundation... I also don't know where you get it from that Renaissance Technologies is heavily invested in AI. Any sources to back up your claims because I suspect you made all that up?
Re: Why Erdős Problems Are Falling to AI
#5Quantamagazine is owned by the heavily AI invested Renaissance Fund. The whole article is an ad that covertly or overtly inserts how websites are built with ChatGPT, how humans say that AI is better than them etc. This is incidentally the future of chatbots. I could not have written this comment without Illy Espresso. Would you like to find a cafe near you?
We have now passed the point where the AI bots were annoying. Now it is the reactionary “everything even possibly slightly remotely tangentially connected to AI must be deplatformed” rants everywhere that are even worse.
It would be tempting to assume the commenter here has no idea what Renaissance is or how they made so much money.
Re: Why Erdős Problems Are Falling to AI
#6When OpenAI posted about their 10 breakthroughs, I saw lots of career research mathematicians say things mostly along the lines of “I don’t understand any of this it’s way over my head”.
Are we missing the forest for the trees here? If a math problem falls in the forest but nobody is around to understand it does it make a sound?
How can we possibly make use of these breakthroughs if we don’t understand them? How could we ever make anything useful with them?
Are we ready to just let go of our intellectual faculties and give them to a giant supercomputer nobody understands? How do we tell truth from fiction?
Re: Why Erdős Problems Are Falling to AI
#7The mathematics are above my intellectual capacities, but I still find the man and his lifestyle fascinating. Though I admit his heart attack probably wasn't a coincidence, sadly. I wonder if national, institutional, or otherwise "eccentric" sponsorships (encouraging a similar migrant-madman approach to academic cultivation) of some of the folks on HN wouldn't lead to meaningful discoveries in CS. I often see comment…
> I wonder if national, institutional, or otherwise "eccentric" sponsorships (encouraging a similar migrant-madman approach to academic cultivation) of some of the folks on HN wouldn't lead to meaningful discoveries in CS.
The problem is that Paul Erdos was eccentric but he was also Paul Erdos. I'm not saying you're implying that, but I feel it's a similar line of thinking to how popular culture often romanticizes autism and Asperger's because some very smart people are (allegedly) affected. The same group includes people who need 24/7 care.
Computer science at the frontier is as specialized and hard as mathematics, you need years of study to truly understand a field well enough to make meaningful contributions. You can try sponsoring me if you really want, but I don't think you'd be spending your money wisely in expectation.
Re: Why Erdős Problems Are Falling to AI
#8Quantamagazine is owned by the heavily AI invested Renaissance Fund. The whole article is an ad that covertly or overtly inserts how websites are built with ChatGPT, how humans say that AI is better than them etc. This is incidentally the future of chatbots. I could not have written this comment without Illy Espresso. Would you like to find a cafe near you?
Which fund would that be?
Re: Why Erdős Problems Are Falling to AI
#9When OpenAI posted about their 10 breakthroughs, I saw lots of career research mathematicians say things mostly along the lines of “I don’t understand any of this it’s way over my head”. Are we missing the forest for the trees here? If a math problem falls in the forest but nobody is around to understand it does it make a sound? How can we possibly make use of these breakthroughs if we don’t understand them? How coul…
Latest presentation of Terence Tao on what current advancements in AI mean for math discusses (among other things) those issues: https://teorth.github.io/tao-web/slides/age-of-ai-icm-2026.p...
Re: Why Erdős Problems Are Falling to AI
#10When OpenAI posted about their 10 breakthroughs, I saw lots of career research mathematicians say things mostly along the lines of “I don’t understand any of this it’s way over my head”. Are we missing the forest for the trees here? If a math problem falls in the forest but nobody is around to understand it does it make a sound? How can we possibly make use of these breakthroughs if we don’t understand them? How coul…
I think it's the scientist version of "I vibecoded ten apps this weekend (at one point I'll have real users too)".
Because it's math, it's all mysterious and genuinely impressive, but in the end, if no human cares about it (apart from attention grabbing "it's so over" tweets and articles), does it really matter?