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A misalignment of AI in mathematics

mathandai.org

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Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#31

Post by viccis »

aerodexis wrote: post #9

Seems more like a misalignment b/w the people practicing mathematics and the people ultimately footing the bill for their work. Governments are invested in solving mathematical problems for practical purposes. Up to now, achieving these practical purposes relied on mathematicians doing their mathematician thing, which is better defined as a social activity than the achievement of a practical result. Now, governments…

>Governments are invested in solving mathematical problems for practical purposes.

Very ignorant view of mathematics that also begs the question with an unspoken assumption of what a government is and wants while also ignoring the contingent nature of those things throughout history.

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#32

Post by vatsachak »

kccqzy wrote: post #13
vatsachak wrote: post #4

[flagged]

What benefit is there if the machine has unlocked understanding but no human has? What incentives are there for humans to learn and gain such understanding from machines?

Because it's beautiful. Because you love math for maths sake and not some weird egotistical game

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#33

Post by Toynbeeidea »

kccqzy wrote: post #13
vatsachak wrote: post #4

[flagged]

What benefit is there if the machine has unlocked understanding but no human has? What incentives are there for humans to learn and gain such understanding from machines?

The same incentive there always was: Because you wanna know. What incentive were you thinking of?

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#34

Post by Drupon »

vatsachak wrote: post #30
alecfv26 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Any serious mathematician would read the LLM output and rework their understanding. I read a bourgain paper a week in grad school and they're probably worse than an LLM generated paper. I still had to recreate the tricks in my own language. As far as I can tell the plagiarism accusations are also coping to the fact that the new models are super human at slam dunking research projects. Do we think that OpenAI is going…

For your sake, based on your comments throughout this post, I hope you didn't pay for any stage of your education.

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#35

Post by flyinglizard »

In the savanna it’s not about who outruns the lion but who outruns their peers escaping the lion.

Frontier labs need these headlines not for human progress but as beauty pageant for investors and government agencies. If they don’t do maths they’ll just go after other fields.

So Terrance Tao here might be able to hold them off math but he won’t stop them from speedrunning STEM with similar consequences.

We may be locking people out of these fields instead delegating everything to machines, and I don’t think the machines are good enough to assume that responsibility.

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#39

Post by vatsachak »

_flag wrote: post #22
vatsachak wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Mathematicians are trying to cope that math wasn't slop this whole time. Grothendieck was anti-slop but most papers are slop. I don't think AI is going to rewrite bourbaki anytime soon

With your understanding of mathematical "slop", do you believe that Deligne and Scholze, two signatories, produced or produce mathematical slop?

Grothendieck accused Deligne of "slop" with his proof of the weil conjecture.

Scholze's math is definitely not slop.

But you're taking two of the best mathematicians of the last century against my claim about averages

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