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Mathematics in the age of AI

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Re: Mathematics in the age of AI

#271

Post by feoren »

auggierose wrote: post #255
esafak wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The employer's, whose salary affords your subsistence.

I don't think anyone wants to be employed. They want the money that comes with employment. If you can make get money without employment, like rich kids, for example, I think most people would prefer that.

And you think that once the poor are no longer needed by the rich, the rich will decide to just give them money anyway? We already have dedicated campaigns to make sure people die sick and homeless on the streets when they become obsolete. You think that is not going to get much, much worse?

Re: Mathematics in the age of AI

#272

Post by feoren »

a2ff6eeb0 wrote: post #125
evenhash wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If what you’re saying is true, what’s the use (or even meaning) of being “all in”? You’re a rock either way.

It's not there yet, and every move we're currently making is towards an extremely inequitable future. Unless things change, not everyone is going to benefit from AI. What are you doing today to end up on the team that wins? Once AI starts under its own direction, human brains won't be competitive. It feels like we're a breakthrough or two away, and with trillions of funding, we'll get there. Every dollar we spend on…

> Unless things change, not everyone is going to benefit from AI. What are you doing today to end up on the team that wins?

It is going to be a tiny minority of people who "win". The other 99.5% of humans will just be losers who, what, die in the streets? This argument reminds me of Roko's Basilisk. "The humanity-ending torture-loving Basilisk is coming whether you like it or not, so come over here and help me build it!"

Re: Mathematics in the age of AI

#273

Post by a2ff6eeb0 »

feoren wrote: post #271
auggierose wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think anyone wants to be employed. They want the money that comes with employment. If you can make get money without employment, like rich kids, for example, I think most people would prefer that.

And you think that once the poor are no longer needed by the rich, the rich will decide to just give them money anyway? We already have dedicated campaigns to make sure people die sick and homeless on the streets when they become obsolete. You think that is not going to get much, much worse?

Yeah, better not be poor when the AI comes.

Re: Mathematics in the age of AI

#274

Post by customguy »

czgov wrote: post #237
customguy wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone claimed it would be "useful", without saying what for. Hence the questions "what for?". To try to shame people for that question in the name of science of all things is wild.

Which product becomes better if it is correct? Tying the worthiness of theoretical knowledge to the whether or not it improves a product is asinine in my opinion.

I generally[0] agree, but IMO that should be taken up with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49369458 more than with people who ask for examples for that claim.

[0] and am only adding that "generally" because I can think of examples where I'd disagree, e.g. a kid that wants to count all stars in the night sky before it has dinner would just starve and then not be able to count stars, either.

Re: Mathematics in the age of AI

#276

Post by energy123 »

fultonn wrote: post #270
energy123 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many eminent mathematicians did their best work while not talking about it with anyone, sometimes in isolation. Newton's calculus, Perelman's poincare, much of Grothendiek's work, Wiles's fermat, Ramanujan's earlier days. That's not all top mathematicians as you can look at Von Neumann as a sociable counter-example. But it shows that discussion of your current ideas is not a requirement. Grothendiek goes so far as to…

> eminent I would use a different adjective: exceptional. There are not not times where lone geniuses produce amazing output. But most of humanity's progress over the last few thousand years (or at least certainly the last few hundred) resulting from a different type of work.

That hypothesis requires substantiation. Just because 10 people in a room came up with a breakthrough doesn't mean a sociological process contributed positively to that breakthrough. People generally like socializing, so the base rate is going to be high by default. The breakthroughs might have been more numerous if they had each followed Grothendieck's advice (who is a contender for the world's most talented theory builder) and intentionally decorrelated from one another to free themselves from convention.

Referring to my list of examples as exceptional in the sense of being rare is rather unfair, given how numerous these examples are relative to the body of mathematical work we would consider incredible and especially relative to the desire of the average human to socialize. The fact that such a large % of that body of work occurred while the individual was in relative isolation is something we should pay attention to.

Re: Mathematics in the age of AI

#277

Post by podocarp »

noosphr wrote: post #127
zahlman wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is a valid counterpoint at all. Math is cooperative, and comprehension is the point : the proof has value exactly because (and only to that extent) it empowers humans to understand an abstract truth. Chess is competitive: the memorized line has value because it makes you incrementally more likely to defeat your opponent.

Math is also useful. If someone showed that p = np tomorrow in a formally verified proof I don't care if no one can understand it.

Both are right. Practically speaking your view is right, and is similar to one of hilberts quest to come up with a proof spitting machine. Just get a computer to enumerate through all proofs and we absorb the results. But you have to agree this is deeply dissatisfying intellectually. This is like if trigonometry was discovered with no relation to circles and triangles but just as a series of look up tables (like in a calculator) and we just know it works for certain scenarios and that's all there is to it.

Re: Mathematics in the age of AI

#278

Post by amoss »

frozenseven wrote: post #251
amoss wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoting directly from the dartmouth conference: "every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence can in principle be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it."

Yes, that's correct. Intelligence is not magic.

No, it is the application of learning and that is why learning is central to the definition tgat you pointed at.

Re: Mathematics in the age of AI

#279

Post by qsera »

GPerson wrote: post #254
qsera wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legit people are used by marketing all the time.

I think the villains who run these companies benefit from Tao’s actions because he’s a de facto thought leader of mathematics not taking a very hard anti-AI stance. However, I don’t think a very hard anti-AI stance is correct for someone in his position. Honestly, do you want a bunch of AI labs to 100% dictate the future of whatever your field is or do you want the best leaders of your field to at least try to shape…

> Hypothesis 4.1..

What does it say?

Re: Mathematics in the age of AI

#280

Post by cubefox »

GPerson wrote: post #23
qsera wrote: post #11

If the title have said in the age of "LLMs", I might have given it a try.

You should give it a try. Tao is a wonderful person and is trying to help humanity.

If he was, he wouldn't be doing useless pure math research. He is doing his hobby (pure math) while getting paid for it. That's not what helping humanity looks like.

(Yes, pure math research is useless. Applied math is very useful, but he is doing pure math, which is very useless.)

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