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GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics

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Re: GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics

#101

Post by hgfda »

emil-lp wrote: post #19
outlace wrote: post #11

The headline may make it seem like AI just discovered some new result in physics all on its own, but reading the post, humans started off trying to solve some problem, it got complex, GPT simplified it and found a solution with the simpler representation. It took 12 hours for GPT pro to do this. In my experience LLM’s can make new things when they are some linear combination of existing things but I haven’t been to g…

"GPT did this" . Authored by Guevara (Institute for Advanced Study), Lupsasca (Vanderbilt University), Skinner (University of Cambridge), and Strominger (Harvard University). Probably not something that the average GI Joe would be able to prompt their way to... I am skeptical until they show the chat log leading up to the conjecture and proof.

[dead]

Re: GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics

#102

Post by lamontcg »

dotancohen wrote: post #59
randomtoast wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but I haven’t been to get them to do something totally out of distribution yet from first principles Can humans actually do that? Sometimes it appears as if we have made a completely new discovery. However, if you look more closely, you will find that many events and developments led up to this breakthrough, and that it is actually an improvement on something that already existed. We are always building on the shou…

Relativity comes to mind. You could nitpick a rebuttal, but no matter how many people you give credit, general relativity was a completely novel idea when it was proposed. I'd argue for special relatively as well.

Not really. Pretty sure I read recently that Newton appreciated that his theory was non-local and didn't like what Einstein later called "spooky action at a distance". The Lorentz transform was also known from 1887. Time dilation was understood from 1900. Poincaré figured out in 1905 that it was a mathematical group. Einstein put a bow on it all by figuring out that you could derive it from the principle of relativity and keeping the speed of light constant in all inertial reference frames.

I'm not sure about GR, but I know that it is built on the foundations of differential geometry, which Einstein definitely didn't invent (I think that's the source of his "I assure you whatever your difficulties in mathematics are, that mine are much greater" quote because he was struggling to understand Hilbert's math).

And really Cauchy, Hilbert, and those kinds of mathematicians I'd put above Einstein in building entirely new worlds of mathematics...

Re: GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics

#103

Post by nozzlegear »

floxy wrote: post #74
nozzlegear wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> hence Open AI having an author credit. How much precedence is there for machines or tools getting an author credit in research? Genuine question, I don't actually know. Would we give an author credit to e.g. a chimpanzee if it happened to circle the right page of a text book while working with researchers, leading them to a eureka moment?

>How much precedence is there for machines or tools getting an author credit in research? For a datum of one, the mathematician Doron Zeilberger give credit to his computer Shalosh B. Ekhad on select papers. https://medium.com/@miodragpetkovic_24196/the-computer-a-mys... https://sites.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/akherim/EkhadCredit... https://sites.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/pj.html

Interesting (and an interesting name for the computer too), thanks!

Re: GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics

#104

Post by tjr »

randomtoast wrote: post #53
outlace wrote: post #11

The headline may make it seem like AI just discovered some new result in physics all on its own, but reading the post, humans started off trying to solve some problem, it got complex, GPT simplified it and found a solution with the simpler representation. It took 12 hours for GPT pro to do this. In my experience LLM’s can make new things when they are some linear combination of existing things but I haven’t been to g…

> but I haven’t been to get them to do something totally out of distribution yet from first principles Can humans actually do that? Sometimes it appears as if we have made a completely new discovery. However, if you look more closely, you will find that many events and developments led up to this breakthrough, and that it is actually an improvement on something that already existed. We are always building on the shou…

Go enough shoulders down, and someone had to have been the first giant.

Re: GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics

#105

Post by loire280 »

square_usual wrote: post #64

It's interesting to me that whenever a new breakthrough in AI use comes up, there's always a flood of people who come in to handwave away why this isn't actually a win for LLMs. Like with the novel solutions GPT 5.2 has been able to find for erdos problems - many users here (even in this very thread!) think they know more about this than Fields medalist Terence Tao, who maintains this list showing that, yes, LLMs hav…

It's easy to fall into a negative mindset when there are legions of pointy haired bosses and bandwagoning CEOs who (wrongly) point at breakthroughs like this as justification for AI mandates or layoffs.

Re: GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics

#106

Post by [deleted] »

poplarsol wrote: post #99
dotancohen wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relativity comes to mind. You could nitpick a rebuttal, but no matter how many people you give credit, general relativity was a completely novel idea when it was proposed. I'd argue for special relatively as well.

That's not exactly true. Lorentz contraction is a clear antecedent to special relativity.

[deleted]

Re: GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics

#107

Post by hgfda »

square_usual wrote: post #64

It's interesting to me that whenever a new breakthrough in AI use comes up, there's always a flood of people who come in to handwave away why this isn't actually a win for LLMs. Like with the novel solutions GPT 5.2 has been able to find for erdos problems - many users here (even in this very thread!) think they know more about this than Fields medalist Terence Tao, who maintains this list showing that, yes, LLMs hav…

It is not only the the peanut gallery that is skeptical:

https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=15362

Let's wait a couple of days whether there has been a similar result in the literature.

Re: GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics

#108

Post by mrguyorama »

Don't lend much credence to a preprint. I'm not insinuating fraud, but plenty of preprints turn out to be "Actually you have a math error here", or are retracted entirely.

Theoretical physics is throwing a lot of stuff at the wall and theory crafting to find anything that might stick a little. Generation might actually be good there, even generation that is "just" recombining existing ideas.

I trust physicists and mathematicians to mostly use tools because they provide benefit, rather than because they are in vogue. I assume they were approached by OpenAI for this, but glad they found a way to benefit from it. Physicists have a lot of experience teasing useful results out of probabilistic and half broken math machines.

If LLMs end up being solely tools for exploring some symbolic math, that's a real benefit. Wish it didn't involve destroying all progress on climate change, platforming truly evil people, destroying our economy, exploiting already disadvantaged artists, destroying OSS communities, enabling yet another order of magnitude increase in spam profitability, destroying the personal computer market, stealing all our data, sucking the oxygen out of investing into real industry, and bold faced lies to all people about how these systems work.

Also, last I checked, MATLAB wasn't a trillion dollar business.

Interestingly, the OpenAI wrangler is last in the list of Authors and acknowledgements. That somewhat implies the physicists don't think it deserves much credit. They could be biased against LLMs like me.

When Victor Ninov (fraudulently) analyzed his team's accelerator data using an existing software suite to find a novel SuperHeavy element, he got first billing on the authors list. Probably he contributed to the theory and some practical work, but he alone was literate in the GOOSY data tool. Author lists are often a political game as well as credit, but Victor got top billing above people like his bosses, who were famous names. The guy who actually came up with the idea of how to create the element, in an innovative recipe that a lot of people doubted, was credited 8th

https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.83...

Re: GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics

#110

Post by nozzlegear »

slopusila wrote: post #91
nozzlegear wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it? I think there's a difference between "the researchers used ChatGPT" and "one of the researchers literally is ChatGPT." The former is the truth, and the latter is the misrepresentation in my eyes. I have no problem with the former and agree that authors/researchers must note when they use AI in their research.

now you are debating exactly how GPT should be credited. idk, I'm sure the field will make up some guidance for this particular paper it seems the humans were stuck, and only AI thinking unblocked them

> now you are debating exactly how GPT should be credited. idk, I'm sure the field will make up some guidance

In your eyes maybe there's no difference. In my eyes, big difference. Tools are not people, let's not further the myth of AGI or the silly marketing trend of anthropomorphizing LLMs.

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