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A misalignment of AI in mathematics

mathandai.org

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Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#841

Post by bananaflag »

reasonableklout wrote: post #732
redox99 wrote: post #702

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course you're not going to get rich with the kind of software that LLMs can one shot these days. But that kind of software like to-do lists or basic CRUD have been saturated for over a decade, way before LLMs. People overestimate how much you can one shot, yeah a good prompt can get you 90% there but that 10% remaining often takes months of extra work. Software has always progressed this way, lots of devs back the…

But what does the human researcher do in this future? If they are not needed to understand the result, then what's their role? Asking the right questions? But how will they know what questions to ask if they don't have a deep understanding of the domain earned by sweating the details themselves? And how long will they be needed to ask the right questions, how long until AI can do that too? > Software has always progr…

> Asking the right questions? But how will they know what questions to ask if they don't have a deep understanding of the domain earned by sweating the details themselves?

The right questions are very simple to ask.

How do I get food. How to cure aging. How to turn lead into gold. How to fly high. What is the ultimate theory of physics. Are there any odd perfect numbers. Is there a soul.

We have reached complicated questions requiring deep knowledge because we tried to solve the simpler ones and reached obstacles. For example to solve alchemy we had to develop nuclear physics (and in the process we got chemistry). If one has a genie able to solve questions, you won't have to think about the complicated ones because the genie will.

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#842

Post by int_19h »

ekidd wrote: post #673
redox99 wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Those who think it's me or the machine will fail. Those who realize how much you can accelerate your research with the help of AI will succeed.

> Those who think it's me or the machine will fail. > Those who realize how much you can accelerate your research with the help of AI will succeed. This is only true up until a point. If I treat a mid-sized model (say, Qwen3.8 Flash Next) like a pair programmer, then yes, it accelerates my work. But I can already see the next stage with Fable: If I give it a couple of paragraphs of spec and $50, then I can just leave…

> But I don't expect AI to accelerate humans or improve our productivity for long. I can already see the first signs of a future where the AI doesn't need us for anything at all.

The real question is, why is this a bad thing?

Every task that is automated is a task that humans no longer have to do. It doesn't mean that humans still can't do it for reasons other than "because it needs to be done".

And if the answer is "why bother if X does it better", then what does it say about the motivations of doing it in the first place?

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#843

Post by subsistence234 »

slopinthebag wrote: post #604
alkyon wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still an optimistic scenario. Artificial superintelligence may develop hypermathematics of a kind that never will be accesible to human mind, enhanced or not. One can't teach geometry to ants even if you put them on a Moebius strip. It would be more like Lem's novel where it completely disappears from the human horizon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem_XIV

Why would this be optimistic? This sounds extremely negative to me…

optimistic in comparison to the alternative, where humans can't understand anything anymore.

if a particularly intelligent sixth grader was highly motivated to understand chromatic homotopy and had a highly capable private teacher available to her 24/7, she might within a year get to the point where she could apply it by herself to figure out some simple but nontrivial topological properties. (nobody has tested this. maybe it would require at least three years instead of one.)

if a particularly intelligent chimpanzee was for some reason highly motivated to understand chromatic homotopy, no matter how many years the most incredible teachers spent explaining it to her, she would never comprehend anything about it.

that's the pessimistic scenario: humans will be to future AI like our closest evolutionary relatives are to us. or even more pessimistic: we will be to future AI like insects are to us.

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#844

Post by [deleted] »

myng111 wrote: post #689
pks016 wrote: post #627

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…

This really resonates with me. I'm early in my PhD and I'm researching a niche form of data compression and IC design. I don't use any AI at all in my research, I do it the super old fashioned way, I read papers cover to cover and sections of textbooks to familiarise myself with the field. I genuinely enjoy doing this, it's really fun to think critically about what an author wrote or how a particular approach works.…

[deleted]

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#845

Post by int_19h »

kibwen wrote: post #647
timcobb wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does success look like?

There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always—do not forget this, timcobb—always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless^W not also subscribed to ChatGPT. If you want a pictur…

> There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life.

How does the ability or inability of AI to do something blocks your curiosity or enjoyment of the process of life?

Not being able to pay bills because you're out of job does ruin the enjoyment of life, sure. But the AI is not the problem there; the economic system is. Torches and pitchforks should be properly applied to the economic and the political elites, not to data centers.

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#846

Post by int_19h »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #703
pks016 wrote: post #627

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…

I commented something similar on a bunch of other posts. The thing that scares me about a lot of the AI community in general is that their utopia is basically more frightening to me than their doom scenarios. They present this "incredible abundance" as the ultimate human endgame, but I agree, when we all end up like the humans in Wall-E, what's the purpose of it all? And then to get retorts of "it's just just rich te…

You're basically saying that there's no purpose to it all if there's no human suffering involved, somehow.

Why? Is suffering the purpose? What is the goal?

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#847

Post by int_19h »

bubblegumcrisis wrote: post #492
causalmodels wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do we do about the problems that don't require many millions of dollars in resources? Last weekend I spun up a small agent swarm and pointed it at a field of math I have some affinity towards. Within four hours I had settled three conjectures, one of which is rather famous (for the field, not in general). It cost me about four hundred dollars. I am at a loss about what to do with these results. On one hand I fee…

It is interesting isn't it. You asked for a painting. A robot made the painting. You looked at it and said, "well, I guess it's good. Should I put it online or something? Dunno. Hey Fred, what do you think of this?" Meanwhile, your next door neighbor spends their entire life developing their understanding of life through art. They "understand" (maybe not in a way they can articulate) art. You go next door, you look a…

If we're all painters, where does the food come from?

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#848

Post by raincole »

pks016 wrote: post #627

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…

I think the impact is heavily exaggerated. Yes, it means mathematics will be transformed into a field that relies on tools instead of your mind alone. Just like most fields. Doctors heavily rely on (really expensive!) tools to make diagnoses and do surgeries too. But it doesn't make them less valuable. If anything it makes them more valuable, as the society needs a long training and filtering process to decide who to use these tools.

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#850

Post by munksbeer »

pvab3 wrote: post #668
gpt5 wrote: post #632

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that the main thing people in this thread are missing, is that it's not about math. AI progression is very likely to affect every single thing humans can do today. Mathematicians are feeling the blow this week, especially as there was wide spread denial in that math community over the capabilities of AI over the last few years, but it's the same problem everywhere.

that is incredibly depressing

I feel the opposite. Human history is depressing overall. I imagine AI will eventually lead to less scarcity and better lives overall.
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