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

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

#91

Post by jambalaya8 »

orphereus wrote: post #11
a2ff6eeb0 wrote: post #5

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.

that does not make it not true, nor does it make those companies or their products not dangerous. I like looking at videos of animals that tear other animals apart and eat them; lion cubs are super cute; but that does not mean I want to be thrown into a cage with a model of a lion that has not been programmed to be disinterested when it is sated. AIs appear never sated; humans using or making AI wanting money, even less so. I suspect the AIs will understand the cost long before the humans will, not that anyone making money would care.

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

#92

Post by podgorniy »

LogicFailsMe wrote: post #55

What I'm looking forward to amidst all the negativity, fear, and loathing is for some 20something mathematician to outdo both humanity and machines by leaning hard into centauring to expand the frontiers of mathematics. Pretty much what I think the future will play out to be as well, but I don't think people are ready for that yet.

People aren't ready to prove/disprove every one who access to LLM and claims has changed course of humanity

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

#93

Post by tsimionescu »

AustinDev wrote: post #73
EA-3167 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Robots in labs already exist, but mercifully they're not hooked up to anything as unpredictable as an LLM. Robots tend to work best as specialists doing high-throughput, extremely repetitive tasks which nonetheless require a degree of precision. Giving a robot a "human" body makes very little sense if we're talking about the needs and productivity of a non-human; humanoid robots are marketing for humans.

Humanoid robots are obviously more than marketing. The entirety of human civilization is human shaped. Making robots that are human shaped is easier and more efficient than redesigning and rebuilding everything that exists.

> Making robots that are human shaped is easier and more efficient than redesigning and rebuilding everything that exists.

In the last 100-200 years, that has been proven wrong at every single step.

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

#94

Post by meroes »

LogicFailsMe wrote: post #55

What I'm looking forward to amidst all the negativity, fear, and loathing is for some 20something mathematician to outdo both humanity and machines by leaning hard into centauring to expand the frontiers of mathematics. Pretty much what I think the future will play out to be as well, but I don't think people are ready for that yet.

Takes the rogue having access to the $$$$ models though.

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

#95

Post by RGS1811 »

bze12 wrote: post #57
ComplexSystems wrote: post #9

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.

AI has sitzfleisch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer#:~:text=...

This is fantastic. Now I have a sophisticated-sounding german word for my attention deficit.

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

#96

Post by pfdietz »

fsmv wrote: post #47
a2ff6eeb0 wrote: post #5

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 entire point of writing proofs is for advancing human understanding. A giant dump of symbols that passes the lean compiler is meaningless besides human beings understanding it.

> The entire point of writing proofs is for advancing human understanding.

Proofs also enable AIs to direct search and generate knowledge. Verifiability is immensely useful for keeping AI grounded.

One might imagine AI generating enormous numbers of hypotheses and then trying to prove or disprove them, and then mine that data for new abstractions and heuristics.

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

#97

Post by atleastoptimal »

chongli wrote: post #26
a2ff6eeb0 wrote: post #5

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.

We don’t trillions of dollars in LLM investment to build things mathematicians don’t understand. We already have plenty of those, even from ancient times. As to your second point, Terry Tao already has an answer [1]: the proof isn’t the contribution, shared understanding is. This issue was already raised back when the four-colour theorem was proved. Machine proving and machine proof checking are useful tools but they…

If humans have nothing to contribute then shared understanding is a pointless endeavor. It makes sense now in the "centaur" period where human + AI > AI alone, but when AI mathematicians are both more rigorous and more elegant, then taking the time dumbing down their proofs to a human level of understanding is like requiring that we ensure all our current proofs be understandable by a monkey.

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

#98

Post by EA-3167 »

AustinDev wrote: post #73
EA-3167 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Robots in labs already exist, but mercifully they're not hooked up to anything as unpredictable as an LLM. Robots tend to work best as specialists doing high-throughput, extremely repetitive tasks which nonetheless require a degree of precision. Giving a robot a "human" body makes very little sense if we're talking about the needs and productivity of a non-human; humanoid robots are marketing for humans.

Humanoid robots are obviously more than marketing. The entirety of human civilization is human shaped. Making robots that are human shaped is easier and more efficient than redesigning and rebuilding everything that exists.

Outside of sci-fi, marketing proposals, and niches like "Elder care in Japan" there are very few humanoid robots. By contrast non-humanoid robots have been mass produced and used in industry for decades. Arms. Carts. Trollies.

No people. If you want something with fine motor control and dexterity, it's easier to make that the robot and then have another robot bring the workpiece to the arm than it is to build a single robot that can walk around and do it. There are compromises in human features because we're generalists.

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

#99

Post by B-Con »

ralusek wrote: post #81
ComplexSystems wrote: post #9

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.

We're just going to slowly deconstruct every element that could be a factor of intelligence. It's not out-thinking, it's just out-remembering It's not out-thinking, it's just out-working It's not out-thinking, it's just able to consider more things simultaneously It's not creative, it's just randomly generating things and then selecting viable ones

It's almost as if we're building something that... mimics intelligence.

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

#100

Post by aurareturn »

tengbretson wrote: post #82
grebc wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever heard of string theory. People go whole lives without being able to make it pan out.

String theory is a great example of a dead end kept alive by ego and sunk cost fallacy. An AI would have declared it dead and moved on 10 years earlier.

When people make these comments about string theory, are they at the forefront of quantum physics theory and have spent years on modern string theory? Or did they just watch a YouTube video and then keep parroting this?
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