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A misalignment of AI in mathematics

mathandai.org

11–20 of 642 posts

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#11
post #5

Puts the onus on the AI companies to provide a specific replacement mechanism, no? Unless I'm unfamiliar with something else he's written that proposes something more specific and constructive To Tao’s credit he obviously identified the problem very clearly and admits understandably "we did not have the time to have a more consultative process, as with Leiden; but we decided that the urgency of the situation was such…

> Puts the onus on the AI companies to provide a specific replacement mechanism, no? Why? If someone makes an innovation that undercuts the underpinnings of some existing institution, why are they are responsible for cleaning up its failure?

Yes it seems odd.

Out sourcing construction jobs was great for the economy while leaving entire cities in rubbles.

But as soon as it hits the privileged class there is a call to "provide a specific replacement mechanism".

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#12
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Puts the onus on the AI companies to provide a specific replacement mechanism, no? Why? If someone makes an innovation that undercuts the underpinnings of some existing institution, why are they are responsible for cleaning up its failure?

Yes it seems odd. Out sourcing construction jobs was great for the economy while leaving entire cities in rubbles. But as soon as it hits the privileged class there is a call to "provide a specific replacement mechanism".

You mean manufacturing

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#15
There is a contradiction here, among many:

1. it is hard to justify 20 years of education at this point,

2. with no such people around, who will guide those (supposedly) supersmart machines?

A. Ronacher (who builds harnesses for a living) complained today that he has no idea what Astra is doing. Imagine a bunch of slop kiddies facing an aging AI-generated codebase. Not to mention the maths.

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#16

[flagged]

The point is human understanding. If the LLMs understand, but the humans don’t, where does that leave humanity? Building things we don’t understand is a sure path to facing consequences we can’t predict.

Your comment also conveniently ignores the plagiarism aspect of it all. Who is coping here?

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#18
Open source developers have been used by corporations who took their code and created closed SaaS companies.

Now it is the turn of mathematicians who voluntarily contribute ideas, strategies and almost finished proofs in their writings and prompts to closed PaaS (Plagiarism as a Service) companies.

OSS developers have never been respected by the parasites, neither will mathematicians. Your Fields Medals do not protect you from tech bro narcissists. You are a human resource.

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#20
To me it doesn't seem like what AI has destroyed is the ability for mathematicians to develop understanding and share it with each other, but rather it's destroyed the yardstick (solving open problems) that has traditionally been used to measure how much they have contributed to that understanding.

I do see how this is a problem in terms of assigning credit, but I think the cat is already out of the bag in terms of these models being capable. Even without AI labs spending millions of dollars to solve millennium prize problems, there are plenty of other people who will use them to pick low hanging fruit. I don't think any social solution is going to make things go back to the way they were, where you could share your progress towards a famous open problem without risking someone "scooping" you within a couple of days.

I think that the most likely outcomes are either mathematics becomes more secretive, or there is a more deliberative approach to assigning credit than who was "first" to solve some problem. In the former case, this may slow down progress, and in the latter case, this could mean that credit would become more subjective, and be a continual source of controversy.

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