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A misalignment of AI in mathematics

mathandai.org

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Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#961

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

40four wrote: post #870
GPerson wrote: post #703

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s frustrating that this comment is at the top because it, along with lots of the replies it inspired, absolutely misrepresents the actual declaration. The declaration is not making any statements about not using any AI in mathematics. The entire point is to push the use of the technology in a direction which is compatible with positive pre-existing features of the math community, and to make it better known what s…

I don’t see why the two are mutually exclusive to be honest. I’m not a mathematician, but I’m a software engineer and whether I like it or not, AI has changed my field dramatically forever. I understand the distaste for the way AI might be affecting the field of mathematics, but the genie is out of the bottle, and it will never be the same. It just took a little longer for it to hit the math community. Software engin…

The difference is that most software engineers don't care about bringing up a new generation to keep their field alive when they retire. Software engineers usually don't give a flying fuck for other software engineers, young or old, nor for software engineering itself. Mathematicians apparently care deeply for their subject, their field, and its future.

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#962

Post by jborekv »

GPerson wrote: post #703
tmhn2 wrote: post #198

As a mathematician maybe I am a little more optimistic than this declaration. I am thinking of Mochizuki's abc conjecture: He worked in relative isolation, and dumped a huge incomprehensible proof on the community (to oversimplify a bit). That's not totally unlike what might happen if AI generates a huge, incomprehensible proof of let's say RH. Well, what is the result? In the Mochizuki case, it was a lot of skeptici…

It’s frustrating that this comment is at the top because it, along with lots of the replies it inspired, absolutely misrepresents the actual declaration. The declaration is not making any statements about not using any AI in mathematics. The entire point is to push the use of the technology in a direction which is compatible with positive pre-existing features of the math community, and to make it better known what s…

[dead]

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#963

Post by looofooo0 »

tehjoker wrote: post #885
looofooo0 wrote: post #873

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Soon AI mathematics will be 10x or 100x or 1000x more productive than humans in the proofing theorems business. Mathematics of old style is dead, they should develop ideas how to deal with that as a math community.

If a human doesn't understand the proof, it might be useful for certain kinds of engineering, but not really that useful for mathematics except as an existence test.

I don't known, can't we just also indirectly observe the wide platonic landscape of mathematics through observing AI results which humanity could not produce in a 1,000,000 years.

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#964

Post by bonoboTP »

mdnahas wrote: post #862

As a consumer of mathematics, I want to attack the author’s idea of “what that work was meant to achieve in the first place”. I do a lot of programming that uses mathematics. I designed the error recovery file format “par2”. I worked as a quantitative trader. What do I want from math? To be able to search math results, understand them, and apply them. But academic mathematicians are so inwardly focused - as these aut…

One key idea to understand about human behavior is that people are focused on their status among their peers and their next level superiors with power to lift their status. You are not among either, so you don't matter to them. This is nothing special about mathematicians, though, people work the same way everywhere, in every field, community etc.

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#965

Post by bonoboTP »

lying4fun wrote: post #938
mdnahas wrote: post #862

As a consumer of mathematics, I want to attack the author’s idea of “what that work was meant to achieve in the first place”. I do a lot of programming that uses mathematics. I designed the error recovery file format “par2”. I worked as a quantitative trader. What do I want from math? To be able to search math results, understand them, and apply them. But academic mathematicians are so inwardly focused - as these aut…

different fields have different communication cultures, that’s not inherently bad. sacrificing inward focus is expensive from the pov of the insider; i see your points but not everything can be written for a general/wide audience. after all, the audience of the author are the specialists, since only specialists spent the effort to be able to engage with the work in depth. perhaps we disagree that mathematics is not a…

> what the work was meant to achieve in the first place is what the work was achieving in the first place. it was developing mathematics.

Meant by who? Were the people footing the bill aware of this? People can like and do a lot of things. When money enters the picture it gets more complicated because usually the people who pay do that because they derive some gains from it. Historically scientists and mathematicians were employed by various patrons, sometimes doing astronomical calculations for horoscopes, Easter calendars and whatnot. Pure for-fun math was usually done by already wealthy individuals and not salaried employees like today. So it's fine that mathematicians feel this or that is their purpose, but they are coming to us asking for tax money, and so there is a bit of burden on them to be convincing. Before AI they used to argue how it helps physics, engineering technology, computer tech, optimizing logistics and telecom, cancer cures etc. Now the tune changed and it's retroactively now obviously just pure recreation and spiritual elegance. I also like math don't get me wrong. I think it's a great intellectual pursuit. But it's arrogant to expect that the money can flow by default.

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#967

Post by brap »

kaffekaka wrote: post #939
brap wrote: post #935

I know it's incredibly presumptuous for me, a nobody, to say this to 25 Fields Medalists, but: Perhaps you are misaligned. Who decided the goal of math must be human insight? First off, some mathematical truths might simply be far beyond our biological comprehension. Second, for us non-mathematicians, the value of math isn't in understanding exactly why a result is true, it’s in how those results can be applied to ac…

> Second, for us non-mathematicians, the value of math isn't in understanding exactly why a result is true, it’s in how those results can be applied to actually improve our lives. This is just the problem with the Navier-Stokes solution. We now (supposedly) know the truthiness of the statement, but we have no more understanding of why or how it applies to our quality of life. This is exactly the issue Tao is pointing…

Right, but this leads to my main question: is this still necessary?

By analogy with code, do we still need code to be maintainable/readable if machines write it all?

(Obviously for now the answer is yes, but I’m not sure this will be the case in 5-10 years)

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#968

Post by bonoboTP »

gwd wrote: post #241

This sounds a lot to me like people in the 90's complaining that computers were destroying chess. Thirty years later, chess is more popular than it ever was, and chess players are better than they ever have been. I wouldn't be surprised if there are now more chess books now than there ever have been. Furthermore, it turns out that a lot of chess books written before computers were just wrong about a lot of things. It…

> try to digest the 100-page Lean proof into something more manageable

AI will be better at digesting it into something more manageable.

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#970

Post by bonoboTP »

robotpepi wrote: post #858
omnicognate wrote: post #852

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even vaguely related to the point being made in the statement.

agree. so many people missing the point. I don't think they even bothered to read the letter.

I've read it. It's all a kind of navel gazing, all about internal academia dynamics. They should put much more effort into justifying why the public should still fund them. I'm not saying there can be no good reason, but they have to make the case and can't expect that the taxpayer also cares about intra-academic dynamics.
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