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GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics

openai.com

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

#221

Post by Davidzheng »

carefree-bob wrote: post #207
Davidzheng wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's in the link above, but you can look at #1051 or #851 on the erdosproblems website.

The erdosproblems website shows 851 was proved in 1934. https://www.erdosproblems.com/851 I guess 1051 qualifies - from the paper: "Semi-autonomous mathematical discovery with gemini" https://arxiv.org/pdf/2601.22401 "We tentatively believe Aletheia’s solution to Erdős-1051 represents an early example of an AI system autonomously resolving a slightly non-trivial open Erdős problem of somewhat broader (mild) mathemati…

"The erdosproblems website shows 851 was proved in 1934." I disagree with this characterization of the Erdos problem. The statement proven in 1934 was weaker. As evidence for this, you can see that Erdos posed this problem after 1934.

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

#222

Post by globalnode »

Even if gpts results are debatable and we sometimes dislike misapplications of ai where its not needed, it feels as though another milestone is being reached. the first was when they were initially released and everyone was amazed. this second milestone seems to be that their competence has increased. I am often amazed at their output despite being a huge skeptic. I guess the fine tuning is coming along well but I still dont think we will see agi from these chatbots and I doubt theres a third milestone. The second was just a refinement of the first.

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

#223

Post by globalnode »

PlatoIsADisease wrote: post #113

I'll read the article in a second, but let me guess ahead of time: Induction. Okay read it: Yep Induction. It already had the answer. Don't get me wrong, I love Induction... but we aren't having any revolutions in understanding with Induction.

Its frustrating, because if it was actually something new (as in original) then we could start talking about AGI, but its never something new.

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

#224

Post by Human-Cabbage »

supern0va wrote: post #165
cpard wrote: post #126

AI can be an amazing productivity multiplier for people who know what they're doing. This result reminded me of the C compiler case that Anthropic posted recently. Sure, agents wrote the code for hours but there was a human there giving them directions, scoping the problem, finding the test suites needed for the agentic loops to actually work etc etc. In general making sure the output actually works and that it's a s…

>AI can be an amazing productivity multiplier for people who know what they're doing. >[...] >The "AI replaces humans in X" narrative is primarily a tool for driving attention and funding. You're sort of acting like it's all or nothing. What about the the humans that used to be that "force multiplier" on a team with the person guiding the research? If a piece of software required a team of ten to people, and instead…

The optimistic case is that instead of a team of 10 people working on one project, you could have those 10 people using AI assistants to work on 10 independent projects.

That, of course, assumes that there are 9 other projects that are both known (or knowable) and worth doing. And in the case of Uber/Lyft drivers, there's a skillset mismatch between the "deprecated" jobs and their replacements.

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

#225

Post by refulgentis »

jrflowers wrote: post #210
throwuxiytayq wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

I feel for you because you kinda got baited into this by the language in the first couple comments. But whatever’s going on in your comment is so emotional that it’s hard to tell what you’re asking for that you haven’t been able to read already, tl;dr proof stuck at n=4 for years is now for arbitrary n

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

#226

Post by Nevermark »

emil-lp wrote: post #100
famouswaffles wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a stupid point then. Are you able to work with a world leading physicist to any significant degree? No

It's like saying: calculator drives new result in theoretical physics (In the hands of leading experts.)

No it’s like saying: New expert drives new results with existing experts.

The humans put in significant effort and couldn’t do it. They didn’t then crank it out with some search/match algorithm.

They tried a new technology, modeled (literally) on us as reasoners, that is only just being able to reason at their level and it did what they couldn’t.

The fact that the experts were a critical context for the model, doesn’t make the models performance any less significant. Collaborators always provide important context for each other.

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

#227

Post by guluarte »

stouset wrote: post #120
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…

When chess engines were first developed, they were strictly worse than the best humans. After many years of development, they became helpful to even the best humans even though they were still beatable (1985–1997). Eventually they caught up and surpassed humans but the combination of human and computer was better than either alone (~1997–2007). Since then, humans have been more or less obsoleted in the game of chess.…

so we are going back to physical labor then

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

#228

Post by janalsncm »

dakolli wrote: post #194
loire280 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, all of these stories, and frequent model releases are just intended to psyop "decision makers" into validating their longstanding belief that the labour shouldn't be as big of a line item in a companies expenses, and perhaps can be removed altogether.. They can finally go back to the good old days of having slaves (in the form of "agentic" bots), they yearn to own slaves again. CEOs/decision makers would rather…

I’m reminded of Dan Wang’s commentary on US-China relations:

> Competition will be dynamic because people have agency. The country that is ahead at any given moment will commit mistakes driven by overconfidence, while the country that is behind will feel the crack of the whip to reform. … That drive will mean that competition will go on for years and decades.

https://danwang.co/ (2025 Annual letter)

The future is not predetermined by trends today. So it’s entirely possible that the dinosaur companies of today can’t figure out how to automate effectively, but get outcompeted by a nimble team of engineers using these tools tomorrow. As a concrete example, a lot of SaaS companies like Salesforce are at risk of this.

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

#230

Post by _giorgio_ »

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…

Always moving targets.

They never surrender.

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