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AI isn’t outthinking mathematicians, it’s out-remembering them

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11–20 of 545 posts

Re: AI isn’t outthinking mathematicians, it’s out-remembering them

#11

Does it matter? It's going to produce proofs far more intricate than humans can understand, outdoing humans and opening new frontiers. The age of humans comprehending things is coming to an end: our brains just won't have the capacity to make meaningful contributions to science, math, or technology.

"The age of humans comprehending things is coming to an end"

That's something AI companies would really want you to believe.

Re: AI isn’t outthinking mathematicians, it’s out-remembering them

#13

It's also "out-brute forcing them." It just never gets tired. If a mathematician picks a research direction and spends a whole week on it and it doesn't pan out, they will likely be annoyed, need a break for a while, etc. This thing just does not ever get tired or discouraged or care; it's just onto the next thing until something ends up working.

> If a mathematician picks a research direction and spends a whole week on it and it doesn't pan out, they will likely be annoyed, need a break for a while, etc.

Your timelines are a bit unambitious. There's nobody expecting to make significant progress with a week of work.

Re: AI isn’t outthinking mathematicians, it’s out-remembering them

#17

Does it matter? It's going to produce proofs far more intricate than humans can understand, outdoing humans and opening new frontiers. The age of humans comprehending things is coming to an end: our brains just won't have the capacity to make meaningful contributions to science, math, or technology.

> It's going to produce proofs far more intricate than humans can understand, outdoing humans and opening new frontiers.

I agree.

> The age of humans comprehending things is coming to an end: our brains just won't have the capacity to make meaningful contributions to science, math, or technology.

I don't know if I see this being true for quite a while, if ever.

Re: AI isn’t outthinking mathematicians, it’s out-remembering them

#18

It's also "out-brute forcing them." It just never gets tired. If a mathematician picks a research direction and spends a whole week on it and it doesn't pan out, they will likely be annoyed, need a break for a while, etc. This thing just does not ever get tired or discouraged or care; it's just onto the next thing until something ends up working.

The key here is that it’s depending on the human inability to connect the sum of relevant knowledge, but said knowledge comes from humans.

Theres going to be this field day of low-hanging fruit that ML can round up, but after that I suspect it will be in fits and starts as a “connection maker” rather than some proof producer.

Re: AI isn’t outthinking mathematicians, it’s out-remembering them

#19

Does it matter? It's going to produce proofs far more intricate than humans can understand, outdoing humans and opening new frontiers. The age of humans comprehending things is coming to an end: our brains just won't have the capacity to make meaningful contributions to science, math, or technology.

In limited experimentation: AI will certainly make statements that are extremely intricate and hard to understand, in part because they're overcomplicated and in part because they use a bunch of unnecessary terminology.

This is not to say that a human couldn't understand a streamlined version or that the AI would not be better if it made more streamlined statements to begin with.

(I am not saying that everything mathematical that an AI produces is in any sense trivial.)

Re: AI isn’t outthinking mathematicians, it’s out-remembering them

#20

Does it matter? It's going to produce proofs far more intricate than humans can understand, outdoing humans and opening new frontiers. The age of humans comprehending things is coming to an end: our brains just won't have the capacity to make meaningful contributions to science, math, or technology.

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