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My Mental Model of AI Broke on September 8

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Re: My Mental Model of AI Broke on September 8

#3
I think the author is not aware of how much the Millennium Prize proof was actually driven by a human working for years towards that problem. The AI did not solve this on its own. A world class mathematician prompted it towards the proof. In my view, this is still a human achievement, not an AI achievement.

If I design a bulldozer to push a five ton rock, did I push the rock or the bulldozer?

If the AI really did get the Millennium Prize, then why can't you get a Millennium Prize when you have access to the exact same model in ChatGPT?

Re: My Mental Model of AI Broke on September 8

#6
post #3

I think the author is not aware of how much the Millennium Prize proof was actually driven by a human working for years towards that problem. The AI did not solve this on its own. A world class mathematician prompted it towards the proof. In my view, this is still a human achievement, not an AI achievement. If I design a bulldozer to push a five ton rock, did I push the rock or the bulldozer? If the AI really did get…

This is copium. Humans worked on it, but they didn't come close to actually solving it. Even if you do the whole "the AI looked at material in its training data" thing, modern AI can make their own math data to train on with RLVF. This new model is legitimately on a different plane of existence from modern mathematicians.

Re: My Mental Model of AI Broke on September 8

#7
It took the author until Sept. 8, 2026, to realize LLMs are not just stochastic parrots? I'm glad they did, but I'm not sure that is worthy of the front page.

"I remember early systems struggling with something as simple as 2+2. Then, within just a few years, we went from that to systems achieving IMO gold-medal-level performance and now, assuming this proof is correct, to a Millennium Prize problem. That completely changes how I think about the trajectory".

How would Sept. 8 completely change how they think about the trajectory? Seems like there has been tremendous progress at all time.

Re: My Mental Model of AI Broke on September 8

#8
post #3

I think the author is not aware of how much the Millennium Prize proof was actually driven by a human working for years towards that problem. The AI did not solve this on its own. A world class mathematician prompted it towards the proof. In my view, this is still a human achievement, not an AI achievement. If I design a bulldozer to push a five ton rock, did I push the rock or the bulldozer? If the AI really did get…

You could say that about every scientific/mathematical breakthrough. Einstein's Special relativity depended heavily on Lorentz's work, the Michelson-Morley experiments, Maxwell's equations. Grigori Perelman, the only person to have solved a Millenium Prize problem, noted how his work was only possible due to Richard S. Hamilton's work on Ricci flow.

Most scientific breakthroughs are just the completing the last 5% of work already done, but that last 5% is very hard and still only happens very rarely. That an AI was able to synthesize all the work and bring it forward is evidence that AI can make novel progress on the same level as renown mathematicians.

Re: My Mental Model of AI Broke on September 8

#9
post #3

I think the author is not aware of how much the Millennium Prize proof was actually driven by a human working for years towards that problem. The AI did not solve this on its own. A world class mathematician prompted it towards the proof. In my view, this is still a human achievement, not an AI achievement. If I design a bulldozer to push a five ton rock, did I push the rock or the bulldozer? If the AI really did get…

This is copium. Humans worked on it, but they didn't come close to actually solving it. Even if you do the whole "the AI looked at material in its training data" thing, modern AI can make their own math data to train on with RLVF. This new model is legitimately on a different plane of existence from modern mathematicians.

Using the word "copium" is a "if you smelt it you dealt it" type of deal.

Re: My Mental Model of AI Broke on September 8

#10
It's hard to say exactly how much credit Astra gets if its training contained the research notes of Levent Alpöge and Tristan Buckmaster. Surely it's impressive to generate the result even if working from their notes but it muddies the waters on its capabilities quite a bit.

From https://openai.com/index/navier-stokes-solution/:

> we cannot rule out that de-identified data derived from their usage of our products helped improve our models

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