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How An AI math breakthrough ignited a controversy

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171–180 of 245 posts

Re: How An AI math breakthrough ignited a controversy

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but the researchers were also largely relying on AI

“relying on” is misleading here relative to what the researchers have said. If I write a book and pass it through a spelling and polish checker, I still wrote the book and its core IP. I didn’t “rely on” the tool to create the IP.

it’s much more like you come up with the premise and someone else writes the book. the released prompts for other foundational problems (like unit distance) prove that.

Re: How An AI math breakthrough ignited a controversy

#172
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah solving a Millennium Problem is totally equivalent to calculating another digit of pi.

Its called an analogy

It's a really bad analogy then. So bad that it's hard to find an analogy describing how bad it is :)

Re: How An AI math breakthrough ignited a controversy

#173

The whole thing reeks of the desperation of an unprofitable venture-backed startup looking for its next PR win to keep the wind in the sails. But I think what’s being overlooked in the race to claim absolute credit is that both sides ultimately relied on a LLM (and one of OpenAI’s at that). Either a human researcher made a breakthrough discovery with the help of Codex, or the latest GPT model made a breakthrough with…

A company that can solve Millenium problems is somehow still can’t ever make profits. How did you come to that conclusion

If you transplant a world class mathematician into a chemistry lab, do you expect similarly ground breaking results? Do you expect a top chemist to make major advances in mathematics?

The frontier labs are likely betting on lay observers (read: investors) confusing headline-grabbing results in abstract mathematics with phenomenal profitability in more grounded endeavours. There is an implicit fallacy that "If our models can solve mathematics they can do everything else."

Re: How An AI math breakthrough ignited a controversy

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the same way you rely on a keyboard or touchscreen to type this comment. It doesn't mean the tool is the brain behind the work.

frankly don’t know how to reply to these sorts of comments anymore

That's usually a good sign you are on shaky ground!

Re: How An AI math breakthrough ignited a controversy

#175
How ironic that academic institutions, that became outrageously expensive on purpose, are now complaining that academic research is too expensive. This is coming from universities with already incredible endowments. They made science pay-to-play but now don't like that their own rules are being applied to them. Maybe instead of giving money as a bribe to get your kid into a good college, you can give the college some GPU's?

Re: How An AI math breakthrough ignited a controversy

#176

Extensive discussion on OpenAI's blog post on Navier-Stokes: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49613262 . Quanta Magazine article that also discusses some of the controversy: https://www.quantamagazine.org/ai-has-solved-one-of-maths-1-...

And yet you still posted this dupe. That quanta piece more duplication. Everything already well discussed in the OpenAI and the Tristan Buckmaster threads! Do better.

Re: How An AI math breakthrough ignited a controversy

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but the researchers were also largely relying on AI

“relying on” is misleading here relative to what the researchers have said. If I write a book and pass it through a spelling and polish checker, I still wrote the book and its core IP. I didn’t “rely on” the tool to create the IP.

The tools the researchers used though was much more than an spellchecker, because spellcheckers don't come up with chains of reasoning for the arguments in the book. The LLMs did in the case of the Navier-Stokes problem.

Re: How An AI math breakthrough ignited a controversy

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

but the researchers were also largely relying on AI

In the same way you rely on a keyboard or touchscreen to type this comment. It doesn't mean the tool is the brain behind the work.

Keyboards don't suggest chains of reasoning or words to type. When I press the K key, I know exactly what will happen. It's just a translation layer that gives an output known ahead of time and thus does not impinge upon the creativity of putting words together.

A better example would be playing chess against a player slightly stronger than me and using a chess computer to suggest some good moves. I could win, but it certianly wouldn't be just my brain that wins. It would be an amalgamation of my brain with a machine that suggests good moves.

One cannot simply reason by analogy.

Re: How An AI math breakthrough ignited a controversy

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I think you can't just throw money randomly at problems and expect results unless you know a line of attack that can get you all the way. OpenAI chose the line of attack only after it became known to them via rumors. They "front-ran" the researchers.

Yes. What the headlines hailed as an AGI discovery the facts show more to be someone spending years mining for gold, rumor gets to OpenAI that there might be gold in this specific place, they mine there and instantly discover gold, then tell the world they’ve developed the worlds best gold finding/mining machine. Separate from all the allegations of more nefarious actions and ethical issues, that’s the most charitabl…

they threw it on all the millenial math problems (I think there are 6 at this point unsolved, well, 5 now).

And according to them at some point they saw that one was close to being solved, so they pointed all the agents at it.

The same thing happens to humans - at this time there are no simple problems left, so solving the hard ones requires using prior knowledge and attempts at solving things.

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