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Epoch confirms GPT5.4 Pro solved a frontier math open problem

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Re: Epoch confirms GPT5.4 Pro solved a frontier math open problem

#151

Post by famouswaffles »

slopinthebag wrote: post #91
virgildotcodes wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every living thing on Earth is unique. Every rock is unique in virtually infinite ways from the next otherwise identical rock. There are also a tremendous number of similarities between all living things and between rocks (and between rocks and living things). Most ways in which things are unique are arguably uninteresting. The default mode, the null hypothesis should be to assume that human intelligence isn't intere…

I doubt you can even define intelligence sufficiently to argue this point. Since that's an ongoing debate without a resolution thus far. But you claimed that humans aren't unique. I think it's pretty obvious we are on many dimensions including what you might classify as "intelligence". You don't even necessarily have to believe in a "soul" or something like that, although many people do. The capabilities of a human f…

>The capabilities of a human far surpass every single AI to date

What does this mean ? Are you saying every human could have achieved this result ? Or this ? https://openai.com/index/new-result-theoretical-physics/

because well, you'd be wrong.

>, and much more efficiently as well. That we are able to brute-force a simulacrum of intelligence in a few narrow domains is incredible, but we should not denigrate humans when celebrating this.

Human intelligence was brute forced. Please let's all stop pretending like those billions of years of evolution don't count and we poofed into existence. And you can keep parroting 'simulacrum of intelligence' all you want but that isn't going to make it any more true.

Re: Epoch confirms GPT5.4 Pro solved a frontier math open problem

#152

Post by keeda »

blackcatsec wrote: post #112
qnleigh wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But human researchers are also remixers. Copying something I commented below: > Speaking as a researcher, the line between new ideas and existing knowledge is very blurry and maybe doesn't even exist. The vast majority of research papers get new results by combining existing ideas in novel ways. This process can lead to genuinely new ideas, because the results of a good project teach you unexpected things.

This is a way too simplistic model of the things humans provide to the process. Imagination, Hypothesis, Testing, Intuition, and Proofing. An AI can probably do an 'okay' job at summarizing information for meta studies. But what it can't do is go "Hey that's a weird thing in the result that hints at some other vector for this thing we should look at." Especially if that "thing" has never been analyzed before and ther…

> LLMs will NEVER be able to do that, because it doesn't exist.

I mean, TFA literally claims that an AI has solved an open Frontier Math problem, descibed as "A collection of unsolved mathematics problems that have resisted serious attempts by professional mathematicians. AI solutions would meaningfully advance the state of human mathematical knowledge."

That is, if true, it reasoned out a proof that does not exist in its training data.

Re: Epoch confirms GPT5.4 Pro solved a frontier math open problem

#153

Post by parasubvert »

blackcatsec wrote: post #112
qnleigh wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But human researchers are also remixers. Copying something I commented below: > Speaking as a researcher, the line between new ideas and existing knowledge is very blurry and maybe doesn't even exist. The vast majority of research papers get new results by combining existing ideas in novel ways. This process can lead to genuinely new ideas, because the results of a good project teach you unexpected things.

This is a way too simplistic model of the things humans provide to the process. Imagination, Hypothesis, Testing, Intuition, and Proofing. An AI can probably do an 'okay' job at summarizing information for meta studies. But what it can't do is go "Hey that's a weird thing in the result that hints at some other vector for this thing we should look at." Especially if that "thing" has never been analyzed before and ther…

I think you are vastly underestimating the emergent behaviours in frontier foundational models and should never say never.

Remember, the basis of these models is unsupervised training, which, at sufficient scale, gives it the ability to to detect pattern anomalies out of context.

For example, LLMs have struggled with generalized abstract problem solving, such as "mystery blocks world" that classical AI planners dating back 20+ years or more are better at solving. Well, that's rapidly changing: https://arxiv.org/html/2511.09378v1

Re: Epoch confirms GPT5.4 Pro solved a frontier math open problem

#154

Post by razorbeamz »

brenschluss wrote: post #149
razorbeamz wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point I'm trying to make is that all LLM output is based on likelihood of one word coming after the next word based on the prompt. That is literally all it's doing. It's not "thinking." It's not "solving." It's simply stringing words together in a way that appears most likely. ChatGPT cannot do math. It can only string together words and numbers in a way that can convince an outsider that it can do math. It's a p…

sigh; this argument is the new Chinese Room; easily described, utterly wrong. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEUclZdj_Sc

Next-token-prediction cannot do calculations. That is fundamental.

It can produce outputs that resemble calculations.

It can prompt an agent to input some numbers into a separate program that will do calculations for it and then return them as a prompt.

Neither of these are calculations.

Re: Epoch confirms GPT5.4 Pro solved a frontier math open problem

#155

Post by parasubvert »

razorbeamz wrote: post #133
XenophileJKO wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a pretty bold assertion for a meatball of chemical and electrical potentials to make.

Do you know what "LLM" stands for? They are large language models, built on predicting language. They are not capable of mathematics because mathematics and language are fundamentally separated from each other. They can give you an answer that looks like a calculation, but they cannot perform a calculation. The most convincing of LLMs have even been programmed to recognize that they have been asked to perform a calcu…

Mathematics and language really aren't fundamentally separated from one another.

By your definition, humans can't perform calculation either. Only a calculator can.

Re: Epoch confirms GPT5.4 Pro solved a frontier math open problem

#156

Post by qsera »

catlifeonmars wrote: post #123
Validark wrote: post #33

I have long said I am an AI doubter until AI could print out the answers to hard problems or ones requiring tons of innovation. Assuming this is verified to be correct (not by AI) then I just became a believer. I would like to see a few more AI inventions to know for sure, but wow, it really is a new and exciting world. I really hope we use this intelligence resource to make the world better.

Are the only two options AI doubter and AI believer?

Asking the right questions...

Re: Epoch confirms GPT5.4 Pro solved a frontier math open problem

#157

Post by parasubvert »

razorbeamz wrote: post #154
brenschluss wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sigh; this argument is the new Chinese Room; easily described, utterly wrong. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEUclZdj_Sc

Next-token-prediction cannot do calculations. That is fundamental. It can produce outputs that resemble calculations. It can prompt an agent to input some numbers into a separate program that will do calculations for it and then return them as a prompt. Neither of these are calculations.

Humans can't do calculations either, by your definition. Only computers can.

Re: Epoch confirms GPT5.4 Pro solved a frontier math open problem

#158

Post by 59nadir »

bandrami wrote: post #135

It's deeply surprising to me that LLMs have had more success proving higher math theorems than making successful consumer software

Software developers have spent decades at this point discounting and ignoring almost all objective metrics for software quality and the industry as a whole has developed a general disregard for any metric that isn't time-to-ship (and even there they will ignore faster alternatives in favor of hyped choices).

(Edit: Yes, I'm aware a lot of people care about FP, "Clean Code", etc., but these are all red herrings that don't actually have anything to do with quality. At best they are guidelines for less experienced programmers and at worst a massive waste of time if you use more than one or two suggestions from their collection of ideas.)

Most of the industry couldn't use objective metrics for code quality and the quality of the artifacts they produce without also abandoning their entire software stack because of the results. They're using the only metric they've ever cared about; time-to-ship. The results are just a sped up version of what we've had now for more than two decades: Software is getting slower, buggier and less usable.

If you don't have a good regulating function for what represents real quality you can't really expect systems that just pump out code to actually iterate very well on anything. There are very few forcing functions to use to produce high quality results though iteration.

Re: Epoch confirms GPT5.4 Pro solved a frontier math open problem

#159

Post by tovej »

keeda wrote: post #152
blackcatsec wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a way too simplistic model of the things humans provide to the process. Imagination, Hypothesis, Testing, Intuition, and Proofing. An AI can probably do an 'okay' job at summarizing information for meta studies. But what it can't do is go "Hey that's a weird thing in the result that hints at some other vector for this thing we should look at." Especially if that "thing" has never been analyzed before and ther…

> LLMs will NEVER be able to do that, because it doesn't exist. I mean, TFA literally claims that an AI has solved an open Frontier Math problem, descibed as "A collection of unsolved mathematics problems that have resisted serious attempts by professional mathematicians. AI solutions would meaningfully advance the state of human mathematical knowledge." That is, if true, it reasoned out a proof that does not exist i…

It generated a proof that was close enough to something in its training data to be generated.

Re: Epoch confirms GPT5.4 Pro solved a frontier math open problem

#160

Post by staticassertion »

conz wrote: post #99
virgildotcodes wrote: post #56

I don't know why I am still perpetually shocked that the default assumption is that humans are somehow unique. It's this pervasive belief that underlies so much discussion around what it means to be intelligent. The null hypothesis goes out the window. People constantly make comments like "well it's just trying a bunch of stuff until something works" and it seems that they do not pause for a moment to consider whethe…

Re: "I don't know why I am still perpetually shocked that the default assumption is that humans are somehow unique." Perhaps this might better help you understand why this assumption still holds: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchestrated_objective_reducti...

It doesn't. I actually completely reject that theory, and it's nice to see that Wikipedia notes that it is "controversial". There are extremely good reasons to reject this theory. For one thing, any quantum effects are going to be quite tiny/ trivial because the brain is too large, hot, wet, etc, to see larger effects, so you have to somehow make a leap to "tiny effects that last for no time at all" to "this matters fundamentally in some massive way".

It likely requires rejection of functionalism, or the acceptance that quantum states are required for certain functions. Both of those are heavy commitments with the latter implying that there are either functions that require structures that can't be instantiated without quantum effects or functions that can't be emulated without quantum effects, both of which seem extremely unlikely to me.

Probably for the far more important reason, it doesn't solve any problem. It's just "quantum woo, therefor libertarian free will" most of the time.

It's mostly garbage, maybe a tiny tiny bit of interesting stuff in there.

It also would do nothing to indicate that human intelligence is unique.

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