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How An AI math breakthrough ignited a controversy

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Re: How An AI math breakthrough ignited a controversy

#161

Post by ctenb »

jeanmichelselli wrote: post #77

AI models and in particular LLMs are not capable of logic reasoning. See for example this paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.06941 Ergo, they can't prove any theorem whatsoever. How do people at OpenAI expect that we believe in claims like that? This is yet another before-the-IPO stunt in my opinion.. Personally, I won't believe any of these claims until the community of mathematicians says otherwise.

They didn't write a traditional proof, but a lean program, which can be used to validate proofs formally, using a computer. It's still up to humans to check wether the formalization is sensible, but the proof is correct.

Re: How An AI math breakthrough ignited a controversy

#162

Post by alansaber »

rsfern wrote: post #18

Regardless of what you think of the priority dispute issue discussed on sibling threads, I’m highly skeptical of the closing quote that this Navier Stokes result means that the same approach of casually spending a few million on agentic computation is going to solve end to end materials design or drug development. Those problems can’t be formally verified with an automated theorem prover. We have a lot of physics bas…

The TL;DR is still "AI helpful, but not end of the line". The live discussion about these matters is always ridiculously inflated by hyperbole.

Re: How An AI math breakthrough ignited a controversy

#163

Post by whimsicalism »

rakejake wrote: post #44
rsfern wrote: post #18

Regardless of what you think of the priority dispute issue discussed on sibling threads, I’m highly skeptical of the closing quote that this Navier Stokes result means that the same approach of casually spending a few million on agentic computation is going to solve end to end materials design or drug development. Those problems can’t be formally verified with an automated theorem prover. We have a lot of physics bas…

Yeah, I think you can't just throw money randomly at problems and expect results unless you know a line of attack that can get you all the way. OpenAI chose the line of attack only after it became known to them via rumors. They "front-ran" the researchers.

but the researchers were also largely relying on AI

Re: How An AI math breakthrough ignited a controversy

#164

Post by returningfory2 »

gus_massa wrote: post #105
JohnKemeny wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but only if Alpöge’s name was removed This is blatant scientific misconduct.

IIUC, the accusation was not to try to remove Alpöge from the paper he wrote with Buckmaster solving the "easier" conjeture, but to exclude Alpöge in the followup paper where Buckmaster review the OpenAI solution of the "full" conjeture. For comparison, if you offer me to collaborate in a paper about Algebra I may agree to go alone, but if the paper is about Quantum Chemistry I have to piggyback a few coworkers becau…

Yeah I think the verb "removed" is not the right verb here, because the paper in question is OpenAI's hypothetical paper which Alpöge is not on in the first place.

Re: How An AI math breakthrough ignited a controversy

#165

Post by pphysch »

whimsicalism wrote: post #163
rakejake wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I think you can't just throw money randomly at problems and expect results unless you know a line of attack that can get you all the way. OpenAI chose the line of attack only after it became known to them via rumors. They "front-ran" the researchers.

but the researchers were also largely relying on AI

In the same way you rely on a keyboard or touchscreen to type this comment. It doesn't mean the tool is the brain behind the work.

Re: How An AI math breakthrough ignited a controversy

#167

Post by whimsicalism »

pphysch wrote: post #165
whimsicalism wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but the researchers were also largely relying on AI

In the same way you rely on a keyboard or touchscreen to type this comment. It doesn't mean the tool is the brain behind the work.

frankly don’t know how to reply to these sorts of comments anymore

Re: How An AI math breakthrough ignited a controversy

#169

Post by piker »

echoangle wrote: post #134
piker wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. There's a non-pedantic, charitable interpretation widely available. It's below for reference. > Navier-Stokes is one of six [open] “Millennium Problems” on a list compiled by the Clay Mathematics Institute in 2000.

If solved problems don’t count anymore, the sentence also doesn’t make sense because now navier stokes apparently isn’t open anymore too, right?

Maybe? But then the parent comment doesn’t make sense either. (There are 2 solved.) Like I said, take the charitable view. To a lot of readers this will be “announcing” the closure of the second of 7 problems so is internally consistent.

Re: How An AI math breakthrough ignited a controversy

#170

Post by cmiles8 »

whimsicalism wrote: post #163
rakejake wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I think you can't just throw money randomly at problems and expect results unless you know a line of attack that can get you all the way. OpenAI chose the line of attack only after it became known to them via rumors. They "front-ran" the researchers.

but the researchers were also largely relying on AI

“relying on” is misleading here relative to what the researchers have said.

If I write a book and pass it through a spelling and polish checker, I still wrote the book and its core IP. I didn’t “rely on” the tool to create the IP.

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