661–670 of 685 posts
> ... 25 initial signatories — all Fields Medallists — As a non-native English speaker, I initially understood this to mean that all living Fields Medallists had signed. I later realized that it meant only that all the signatories were Fields Medallists. (Apparently, there are 47 living Fields Medallists today.)
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I see how it can be devastating to their ego, but no, I don't see a particular difference in a company spending money for clout vs. a person spending time for clout. The underlying motivation is the same.
Do you really think people dedicate their life to mathematics for clout? If clout was the goal I don’t think becoming a lifelong mathematics academic would be the first step
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Chess is kept afloat by chess players, not by billionaires. If all the billionaire backers stopped sponsoring tournaments, people like me would still play, still pay for chess club memberships, still pay entry fees for tournaments, and still buy chess books, and so on.
I think the parent comment meant professional, high-level chess. The kind people get played to play, not just do for a hobby. That's absolutely on life support. I'm not sure what the equivalent would look like in the math field, but it probably involves a lot of mathematicians losing their jobs and the quality of human-produced math decreasing overall. The quality of the math in general would be fine, since in this s…
Presumably AI will be connect the dots to the applications. As the declaration says, this isn't just about math. Human understanding is losing economic value. You can understand stuff on your own time, I guess.
The standard justification for pure math to holders of purse-strings is something like "it might lead to a useful application down the road, like crypto, who knows". That looks pretty inefficient now. We have to entertain the possibility that AI can develop the math needed for any application we put to it. Eg if number theory didn't exist, we could have asked AI for a way to transit messages securely and it would maybe come up with fermats little theorem as part of its solution or maybe come up with an approach we can't conceive of right now seeing as most of us are constrained to available number theory. Like how in the last year when I give an LLM a programming project I see it doesnt even bother with of the many software libraries I and others have written and just codes up the calls it needs on the fly or finds some other ad hoc solution.
I'm afraid of the ripple effect of the agenda pushed by AI companies will have. In future and even now, they say AI has significantly progressed math and scientific research in general. There is truth to this, but the narrative has done more damage (so far) to the students, researchers, and the culture of knowledge transfer in academia. Many graduate students (I know) are having a crisis if any of their research worth it? If AI can (or will) do everything, what's the point of doing experiments and all? This will eventually deter a whole generation of curious minded students from research.
I guess, only time will whether this is for the good or bad. And how good AI models get without new data from research and experiments.
I never expected this many people (on this thread) arguing semantics and what not. I know that not everyone has morality and ethics, but I didn't realize it was this bad. I'm afraid of the ripple effect of the agenda pushed by AI companies will have. In future and even now, they say AI has significantly progressed math and scientific research in general. There is truth to this, but the narrative has done more damage…
Just compare with the comments on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49639408
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How good were you at those “A is to B as C is to D” SAT questions?
No need to be rude. I didn’t want to misinterpret when responding. I can see how what is happening to mathematicians is similar to what is happening to coding. I’m not sure what your broader point is? Mathematicians shouldn’t be upset? Coders should? Something else?
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I'm actually a AI optimist. I think it'd be great to have everybody getting around in self driving vehicles. If all that AI brought resulted in just taxi/bus drivers being phased out of their jobs in a thoughtful way, then that would be more manageable at the society level. But we're talking about almost all sectors of the economy. If the magnitude of changes that OpenAI and Athropic believe will be delivered with in…
What I’m hearing is “it’s ok when other people lose their jobs…”
Remember when we all said it's a good thing when the coal mining jobs are going away and that they should all just learn to code? Maybe a little more of that energy right now.
I never expected this many people (on this thread) arguing semantics and what not. I know that not everyone has morality and ethics, but I didn't realize it was this bad. I'm afraid of the ripple effect of the agenda pushed by AI companies will have. In future and even now, they say AI has significantly progressed math and scientific research in general. There is truth to this, but the narrative has done more damage…
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It makes no sense to compare mathematics with chess. Chess is a sport. No one is interested in watching two machines compete. Chess doesn't have a practical impact. Etc. What you seem to suggest is that AI will be able to completely (or at least in a great part) replace mathematicians. It could be the case in the future, but no one knows right now, and more importantly: tech companies don't even think about it! they…
> No one is interested in watching two machines compete I’ve watched quite a lot of YouTube videos where two machines compete, so you may not be completely right here
Top chess engine championship is pretty fun to watch.