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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

#221

Post by [deleted] »

pickleRick243 wrote: post #141
sherburt3 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be an incorrect interpretation

I thought as much- my point is that as AI capabilities continue to expand, AI skeptics inadvertently and ironically end up belittling the humans they presumably hold in high esteem vs. the "cold machines" that aren't capable of true thought or creativity. When one says that solving a Millennium prize problem is not impressive, one is essentially demeaning practically all mathematicians and the field of mathematics it…

[deleted]

Re: How An AI math breakthrough ignited a controversy

#222

Post by seafoam »

eieje1 wrote: post #184
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.

You can’t do anything novel with these models from scratch and let it fly. I’ve observed something over the past few months Work on something novel -> llm is kinda useless and low value-add -> Keep at it and in the process feed it more information -> keep doing this periodically -> a few months go by and you realise the model outputs are almost like-for-like regurgitations of what was inputted in some prior period. O…

Agree all. And as the revenues become questionable, the frontier labs practices will necessarily become (more) questionable. Vicious cycle.

To avert that dynamic, the frontier labs must deflect and otherwise act to prevent this controversy from breaking through. Both to the general public, but also more specifically to the firms' decision-makers. All of whom are generally aware of the IP issues, and some of whom are aware of what happened with Cursor and Figma, but with few exceptions have not yet themselves acted to protect their property.

Re: How An AI math breakthrough ignited a controversy

#223

Post by eieje1 »

chermi wrote: post #219
eieje1 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t do anything novel with these models from scratch and let it fly. I’ve observed something over the past few months Work on something novel -> llm is kinda useless and low value-add -> Keep at it and in the process feed it more information -> keep doing this periodically -> a few months go by and you realise the model outputs are almost like-for-like regurgitations of what was inputted in some prior period. O…

I think you stopped at the wrong time with the wrong perspective. Why can't that info accumulation part also be made more self-contained? I guess I'm having trouble unraveling your experience and personal usage vs. what you're concluding about the labs.

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Re: How An AI math breakthrough ignited a controversy

#224

Post by eieje1 »

seafoam wrote: post #222
eieje1 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t do anything novel with these models from scratch and let it fly. I’ve observed something over the past few months Work on something novel -> llm is kinda useless and low value-add -> Keep at it and in the process feed it more information -> keep doing this periodically -> a few months go by and you realise the model outputs are almost like-for-like regurgitations of what was inputted in some prior period. O…

Agree all. And as the revenues become questionable, the frontier labs practices will necessarily become (more) questionable. Vicious cycle. To avert that dynamic, the frontier labs must deflect and otherwise act to prevent this controversy from breaking through. Both to the general public, but also more specifically to the firms' decision-makers. All of whom are generally aware of the IP issues, and some of whom are…

[dead]

Re: How An AI math breakthrough ignited a controversy

#225

Post by fc417fc802 »

vonneumannstan wrote: post #193
eieje1 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t do anything novel with these models from scratch and let it fly. I’ve observed something over the past few months Work on something novel -> llm is kinda useless and low value-add -> Keep at it and in the process feed it more information -> keep doing this periodically -> a few months go by and you realise the model outputs are almost like-for-like regurgitations of what was inputted in some prior period. O…

This doesn't follow for me. There are what, Dozens or Erdos tier problems that got solved with no progress for decades? How does that factor in to your view?

IIUC the argument is that while unsolved there was much work done on them that shows up in the training data. The idea being that the LLM is limited to a small amount of inference over externally supplied data.

Re: How An AI math breakthrough ignited a controversy

#226

Post by eieje1 »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #225
vonneumannstan wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't follow for me. There are what, Dozens or Erdos tier problems that got solved with no progress for decades? How does that factor in to your view?

IIUC the argument is that while unsolved there was much work done on them that shows up in the training data. The idea being that the LLM is limited to a small amount of inference over externally supplied data.

[dead]

Re: How An AI math breakthrough ignited a controversy

#227

Post by pphysch »

Romario77 wrote: post #181
pphysch wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

that's not how AI was used in this case. It's more like a professor with assistants. Professor says the assistants - why don't you dig in this direction, I have a hunch it might produce something valuable. And AI assistant does just that, proving or disproving a hunch. This would take the professor a lot of time if doing by themselves.

Yes, and keyboards also save a lot of time over handwriting. Numerical methods and proof engines save even more time. LLMs are just another tool in the kit.

Re: How An AI math breakthrough ignited a controversy

#228

Post by pphysch »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #179
pphysch wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Keyboards don't suggest chains of reasoning or words to type. When I press the K key, I know exactly what will happen. It's just a translation layer that gives an output known ahead of time and thus does not impinge upon the creativity of putting words together. A better example would be playing chess against a player slightly stronger than me and using a chess computer to suggest some good moves. I could win, but it…

This is straight up misleading. When you press your K key on a touchscreen, your keyboard program may decide you meant to press the neighboring L key (by dynamically inflating the collision geometry on it) because it was statistically far more likely that you meant to press the L key next.

This likely doesn't happen exactly on an analog keyboard, but then many text-processing environments that do the same thing in post. My keyboard just edited 'yuor' to 'your' even though I successfully input the prior string.

Re: How An AI math breakthrough ignited a controversy

#229

Post by beyonddream »

What can be done to prevent hostile take over of scientific research from humans by AI ? I hear lot of complaints and hue and cry (fair enough) but are there positive ideas on what to do about this ? (Regressing back to being secretive about one’s scientific endeavor is not the answer)

Re: How An AI math breakthrough ignited a controversy

#230

Post by robotpepi »

Toutouxc wrote: post #136
robotpepi wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you're as sure of what you say as wrong about it.

Note that your reply has exactly 0 value for anyone who doesn’t already know where and how the parent poster is wrong.

fair enough
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