Is mathematics about to enter the conservatory? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is mathematics about to enter the conservatory?

#121

Post by nxpnsv » Mon, Sep 07, 2026, 4:43 PM UTC

busyant wrote: post #81

nxpnsv wrote: post #51

Our AI system don't just do things. They do it because someone asks. A lot of the boom in AI maths results are solving human formulated problems mostly for PR benefit. Once the novelty passes, would Anthropic or OpenAI keep spending? And without mathematicians to ask the right questions and able to appreciate the results, why would AI driven research continue?

> And without mathematicians to ask the right questions Here, I disagree. What makes you think the AI won't be able to ask the right questions without prompting? > and able to appreciate the results, why would AI driven research continue? Here, I think I agree. At some level, there has to be a human in the process that must understand / interpret the results. I gotta say, however, that I'm not certain about my agreem…

> Here, I disagree. What makes you think the AI won't be able to ask the right questions without prompting?

But why would they ask the right questions without prompting? The LLMs have no intrinsic goal to research math problems, it would just be very costly to run queries without a reason to run them... arguably a human in that loop would be a mathematician, but then we do need them after all.

Re: Is mathematics about to enter the conservatory?

#122

Post by nxpnsv » Mon, Sep 07, 2026, 4:47 PM UTC

bananaflag wrote: post #119

nxpnsv wrote: post #51

Our AI system don't just do things. They do it because someone asks. A lot of the boom in AI maths results are solving human formulated problems mostly for PR benefit. Once the novelty passes, would Anthropic or OpenAI keep spending? And without mathematicians to ask the right questions and able to appreciate the results, why would AI driven research continue?

First of all, because mathematicians themselves are now asking the right questions to the public models to solve problems.

I am not arguing that mathematicians would never use AI systems, they do. I am arguing that if we stop having mathematicians we would stop solving deep mathematical problems as there would be no one to ask the right questions.

Re: Is mathematics about to enter the conservatory?

#123

Post by beedeebeedee » Mon, Sep 07, 2026, 4:47 PM UTC

falcor84 wrote: post #105

cc81 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience the AI still does a lot of heavy lifting of thinking for the person. Just like if I tell an artist can you draw a painting of a deer in the forest, but make it ominous and tense. I could have a vague idea of what that would mean for me but the professional artist will make correct decision in composition, light etc. to create that. Just my sentence is nothing but the image can evoke feelings if done…

Yes, but that sounds to me exactly the process vs. outcome distinction that the parent made, rather than a difference in the intent to communicate.

I think those two arguments converge into one- you can’t get the intent unless you have the process

Re: Is mathematics about to enter the conservatory?

#124

Post by Fraterkes » Mon, Sep 07, 2026, 5:00 PM UTC

LoganDark wrote: post #110

hypersoar wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>? Especially in art, the anti-AI hate mostly reduces to arguing that art is the process not the outcome. That is not my objection to AI art at all. The value of art for me is that somebody has an idea to express and they're trying to communicate it to me. That's totally absent from AI-generated material. I'm not categorically opposed to AI, but my interest in automatically generated content tailored to indulge my pe…

It sounds like the problem you have with AI art is that instead of an artist iterating over parts of the image to get what they want, someone iterates over entire images to get what they want. (Or... they still iterate over parts of the image, but with a generative model instead of manual brush strokes.) Somehow that process distinction makes the difference for you.

Before AI it was possible to "express" yourself to someone else by recommending them a piece of art you liked. There's a lot of art in the world, expressing many different things, so you could actually get across something very specific by being a good curator / recommender. But nobody would seriously claim that they were actually creating, painting with a broader brush at a "book level" instead of a "word level" when they were just curating good novels.

Re: Is mathematics about to enter the conservatory?

#125

Post by viccis » Mon, Sep 07, 2026, 5:10 PM UTC

dofm wrote: post #5

> Our society does not support classical musicians in the same way that we support ‘popular’ musicians. It really really does. Popular/rock/folk/classical musicians all earn much the same way now: a blend of teaching, occasional performance fees, functions performances like weddings and galas, music-related side-gigs (composition, arrangement and recording for commercial music), and non-music-related side gigs — teac…

>I can't believe this is a workable model for mathematicians, either.

It already is. Pure math departments are largely service oriented. They exist to teach engineers calculus. They are already spending a great deal of time doing non-research tasks, just like musicians you described. The exceptions would be the very top researchers at R1 schools, and even then they often spend time advising students and teaching occasional courses. It's not super common to have people do nothing but research in a pure math department.

Re: Is mathematics about to enter the conservatory?

#126

Post by viccis » Mon, Sep 07, 2026, 5:19 PM UTC

whateverboat wrote: post #97

madrox wrote: post #11

We are largely having a reckoning with whether a discipline is the process or the outcome. Music didn't enter the conservatory so much as the relative interest in various styles have changed over time. I get that the author was implying that by talking about pop music, but what was music doing before Mozart came around? Every field is having this existential crisis right now, from art to math. Especially in art, the…

Before Mozart came along, we had folk music, music of the masses, and they continue to exist and will exist today.

Why are you guys talking about Mozart as if you can split the mass adoption of music into pre and post Mozart? Mozart was one of many in an ongoing evolution of European music. The way masses interacted with music varied based on the time and the culture. Some cultures at any given time would vary based on whether they produced much music at all (look at how Calvinism and the way the Dutch aristocracy handled music patronage vs Italy or France impacted Dutch music's dominance before vs after the Renaissance), what kind of music they produced (worship music only or also secular patronage?), etc. Mozart did not significantly overhaul this, rather he spent his latter years desperately trying to keep his reputation and relevance alive with travels.

Re: Is mathematics about to enter the conservatory?

#127

Post by lanstin » Mon, Sep 07, 2026, 5:33 PM UTC

jimmydddd wrote: post #41

madrox wrote: post #11

We are largely having a reckoning with whether a discipline is the process or the outcome. Music didn't enter the conservatory so much as the relative interest in various styles have changed over time. I get that the author was implying that by talking about pop music, but what was music doing before Mozart came around? Every field is having this existential crisis right now, from art to math. Especially in art, the…

I think classical and symphonic music are helped in the US by school music programs. It's the best way to have 100 kids practice and perform for a concert. Breaking them into 25 jazz quartets is a lot more complicated.

Marching band.

Re: Is mathematics about to enter the conservatory?

#128

Post by 1718627440 » Mon, Sep 07, 2026, 5:36 PM UTC

dofm wrote: post #21

encomiast wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even the first-chair musicians and conductors have side gigs. A principal player (I don't think anyone beyond high school band calls them 'first-chair') in a major symphony orchestra in the United States makes $250k-400k a year. These are extremely competitive jobs and they are paid well. Certainly enough to live on if you wanted to. These people often teach, but not really because they need a "side-gig." If you as…

There are about twenty of these people, though. I said "approximately nobody". At a first approximation, no musician who does it for money makes a living out of it. Classical, pop, rock, whatever. Nobody in music, basically, makes real money. Fifty, maybe a hundred violinists in the entire world do earn a pure living. Perhaps another twenty five of each other instrument. A few international soloists in other instrume…

You need hundreds of them to make an orchestra and every big city want's an orchestra to be competitive.

Re: Is mathematics about to enter the conservatory?

#129

Post by emp17344 » Mon, Sep 07, 2026, 5:52 PM UTC

busyant wrote: post #81

nxpnsv wrote: post #51

Our AI system don't just do things. They do it because someone asks. A lot of the boom in AI maths results are solving human formulated problems mostly for PR benefit. Once the novelty passes, would Anthropic or OpenAI keep spending? And without mathematicians to ask the right questions and able to appreciate the results, why would AI driven research continue?

> And without mathematicians to ask the right questions Here, I disagree. What makes you think the AI won't be able to ask the right questions without prompting? > and able to appreciate the results, why would AI driven research continue? Here, I think I agree. At some level, there has to be a human in the process that must understand / interpret the results. I gotta say, however, that I'm not certain about my agreem…

I think we know enough about reinforcement learning to tell that it won’t be able to entirely replace human mathematicians. All of the techniques used by these AI firms are well-studied.

Re: Is mathematics about to enter the conservatory?

#130

Post by LoganDark » Mon, Sep 07, 2026, 5:53 PM UTC

Fraterkes wrote: post #124

LoganDark wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like the problem you have with AI art is that instead of an artist iterating over parts of the image to get what they want, someone iterates over entire images to get what they want. (Or... they still iterate over parts of the image, but with a generative model instead of manual brush strokes.) Somehow that process distinction makes the difference for you.

Before AI it was possible to "express" yourself to someone else by recommending them a piece of art you liked. There's a lot of art in the world, expressing many different things, so you could actually get across something very specific by being a good curator / recommender. But nobody would seriously claim that they were actually creating, painting with a broader brush at a "book level" instead of a "word level" whe…

They didn't create the works they recommend, but they did create the recommendations. AI art is kinda like that, even if you didn't create the work in the dataset. Unfortunately it's also like if the recommendations tried to pass off as original work instead, and didn't actually cite the original work, which I think is a huge reason why people dislike it. I still think it's possible to create art with generative AI, but it takes more than just a prompt, if that makes sense.

I express myself with AI all the time, I just can't share it with anyone because it's banned from all the platforms where I'd care to do so. I don't really write stories without AI anymore, so probably people won't see expressions like that from me again. Maybe you could call that "AI hurts artists", dunno.