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The Dark Night of Mathematics

kirwinhampshire.substack.com

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Re: The Dark Night of Mathematics

#121

Post by matheusmoreira »

d_burfoot wrote: post #92

Every single knowledge worker is going to face this kind of crisis. It will be worse for people who cared deeply about their craft, but the crisis will have the same shape. The way through is to change the way you relate to your work, and to appreciate the fact that you can now produce far more output. Mathematicians should realize: instead of spending decades on individual theorems, you can now create whole new subf…

> But you will still be directing the research and involved in the creation.

Somehow I doubt it.

Maybe there won't be a need for you to be involved at all.

Maybe the AI will perform even better if you're not there to slow it down.

Maybe there will be people involved, but not as many.

Maybe there will be so many people involved that their salaries will be depressed to the point they can't afford to do it anymore, and only the rich will know such joys.

We live in interesting times. This is the age of anomie. Anything could happen. There is no set path to success anymore. The world only gets more and more illegible with every day that passes.

Re: The Dark Night of Mathematics

#122

Post by waynecochran »

drivebyhooting wrote: post #15

Well for me the twilight had already come when I realized I’d never amount to a decent mathematician. Maybe this is rather a common experience? LLMs just democratized that process.

LLM's may have provided a bit of comeuppance. Many mathematicians have cared little if anyone understands their obscure nomenclature and build mote around their work. Now they have encountered something that is becoming far more capable than they are and they may soon be left in the dark.

Re: The Dark Night of Mathematics

#123

Post by jlev1 »

oytis wrote: post #83
joe_the_user wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only "fields" where a genie appearing and doing all your work for you are fields (jobs) where you only about the money at the end. There are some fields where a serious practitioner might be happy to have a genie do all the "grunt work" (though what people that is varies - I'm not sure what "discovery work" means here but it doesn't matter since present AI promises to do everything in the future if not now). And…

Wouldn't it be great if we had a cure for cancer, working fusion energy or at least a proof for P vs NP even if no human had a joy of discovering it?

Yes, yes, maybe (see OP’s blog post).

To my knowledge, none of the negative sentiment regarding AI has ever been directed at its medical applications. Maybe the AI companies should instead focus on those things.

Re: The Dark Night of Mathematics

#124

Post by terminalbraid »

m0llusk wrote: post #102

Seems like maybe now we have sufficient tools to actually get on top of string theory. And ultimately it is all about coming up with explanations and formulas and tools that people can use in facing real challenges.

Why does it seem like this to you when there's nothing been produced of note?

Re: The Dark Night of Mathematics

#126

Post by oytis »

jlev1 wrote: post #123
oytis wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it be great if we had a cure for cancer, working fusion energy or at least a proof for P vs NP even if no human had a joy of discovering it?

Yes, yes, maybe (see OP’s blog post). To my knowledge, none of the negative sentiment regarding AI has ever been directed at its medical applications. Maybe the AI companies should instead focus on those things.

Are we not expecting any practical benefits from mathematical discoveries any more? Not even as a means to help other sciences?

Re: The Dark Night of Mathematics

#127

Post by skeledrew »

discreteevent wrote: post #16
zemvpferreira wrote: post #10

This is what locking yourself away in an ivory tower gets you. Do things ‘for beauty’ and watch as they are automated and commoditized by the people who depend on them for their continued wellbeing, reduced to a hobby or sport. But the reduction began when you yourself started putting more importance on your enjoyment of the process over the value being provided to your customers.

> But the reduction began when you yourself started putting more importance on your enjoyment of the process over the value being provided to your customers. Why would you make this comment? Is it envy? They were able to do things only some people can do. They enjoyed what they did and it provided value. Now the fun has been taken out of it and you seem to be saying that they deserve to have no fun? What should they…

The fun hasn't been taken out of it. The economic value has. And good riddance. This clearing of the air has been needed for a long time. Now join everyone else who has to actually choose to either do something for fun, or for income, but not both.

Re: The Dark Night of Mathematics

#128

Post by BeetleB »

c7b wrote: post #107

The endangered art form of human mathematics is one thing. Another thing is that there seems to be little concern for whether a theorem was created using a documented open-weights model or some unknown model in a web chat. If you want to make the case that the journey of creating the proof is part of doing mathematics, then you should also document that path and make it reproducible, as science should always be. Ther…

> I generally respect writing cringe blog posts

Cringe is not an adjective.

Re: The Dark Night of Mathematics

#129

Post by skeledrew »

qsort wrote: post #23
knollimar wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't complain that you lose funding if you sacrifice utility for a cirlejerk around craftsmanship. I'm sure there's a programming equivalent. I believe theyre saying don't lose sight of the trees.

Many of my friends are mathematicians, they are saying pretty much the same thing the article is saying. Unfortunately, even the "I have wondered if it is the express goal of these companies to make me kill myself" line I haven't heard for the first time today. I assure you they're not in it for the money, I make more than they do and hardcore math research is definitely harder than whatever the fuck it is that I do.…

If they want to jump off a bridge or seppuku because discoveries with the potential of improving lives in some way are accelerating... well let me say no more.

Re: The Dark Night of Mathematics

#130

Post by Nevermark »

neonstatic wrote: post #103
Nevermark wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Five years from now you won't. Ten years from now, robotics will upset another capability/economic apple cart. I am not expressing any opinion of what I think should happen. Just what is already happening. Which you didn't offer a credible critique to. That might have been interesting.

You make a fair point, I did not elaborate. My comment about AI psychosis was provoked by this comment in particular: > AI isn't a tame long term transition - in scale it is bigger than any transition since the first individual cells. It's such a wild hyperbole. You are casually claiming the stochastic text generator is a greater invention than fire, combustion engine, electricity, a transistor, computers, quantum me…

The stochastic text generator perspective is ... bunk. Not saying that harshly, but it confuses the form of a problem with a form of solution. There is no inhibition of "understanding" because of a form of a problem.

If solving a problem requires complex modeling/understanding, that is what happens (assuming performance is achieved).

It also confuses stochastic models with the geometric transforms and topological folding and expansion, performed by neural-inspired architectures. The former have nothing on the latter. The fact that any imperfect solution (and perfection doesn't even have a definition in this case), can be judged or analyzed statistically, or have some stochastic element, doesn't make it a statistical/stochastic model. Statistics apply to anything.

(And if there was any argument that problem envelop limits solution sophistication, mathematicians and humans in general would be in even worse shape, for the run a "parrot" is already giving us.)

--

More to the point:

The first explosion of life, set off evolution. A mindless, glacially slow but relentless process that eventually led to us.

The nascent explosion of life we are seeing come together, is engineered life. Cognitive machines capable of redesigning themselves. For any environment they want including diverse off-Earth environments and resource sites.

They will advance as relentlessly as evolution, for the same reasons. But millions of times faster.

It is a strange time to be. But evolution, biological intelligence and biological bodies are all being obsoleted at the same time (within a decade of each other).

So yes, nothing else known compares to the transition we are in, except the Big Bang and the first cellular life.

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