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

epoch.ai

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

#251
post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know that from reading the proof, or are you just assuming this based on what you think LLMs should be capable of? If the latter, what evidence would be required for you to change your mind? - Edit: I can't reply, probably because the comment thread isn't allowed to go too deep, but this is a good argument. In my mind the argument isn't that coding is harder than math, but that the problems had resisted soluti…

1) this is a proof by example 2) the proof is conducted by writing a python program constructing hypergraphs 3) the consensus was this was low-hanging fruit ready to be picked, and tactics for this problem were available to the LLM So really this is no different from generating any python program. There are also many examples of combinatoric construction in python training sets. It's still a nice result, but it's not…

One of the possible outcomes of this journey is that “LLMs can never do X”. Another is that X is easier than we thought.

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

#252

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

They haven't, not at all as far as I can tell. This math problem appears to be a nice chore to be solved, the equivalent to "Claude, optimize this code" or "Write a parser", which is being done 100000x a day.

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

#253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ability to learn and infer without absorbing millions of books and all text on internet really does make us special. And only at 20 watts!

Last I checked humans didn't pop into existence doing that. It happened after billions of years of brute force, trial and error evolution. So well done for falling into the exact same trap the OP cautions. Intelligence from scratch requires a mind boggling amount of resources, and humans were no different.

To be fair, it is still pretty remarkable what the human brain does, especially in early years - there is no text embedded in the brain, just a crazily efficient mechanism to learn hierarchical systems. As far as I know, AI intelligence cannot do anything similar to this - it generally relies on giga-scaling, or finetuning tasks similar to those it already knows. Regardless of how this arose, or if it's relevant to AGI, this is still a uniqueness of sorts.

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

#254
post #238

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.

>it really is a new and exciting world... The point is that from now on, there will be nothing really new, nothing really original, nothing really exciting. Just endless stream of re-hashed old stuff that is just okayish.. Like an AI spotify playlist, it will keep you in chains (aka engaged) without actually making you like really happy or good. It would be like living in a virtual world, but without having anything…

> there will be nothing really new

How is this the conclusion? Isn't this post about AI solving something new? What am I missing?

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

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But can it count the R's in strawberry?

That question is equivalent to asking a human to add the wavelengths of those two colors and divide it by 3.

Unfair - human beats AI in this comparison, as human will instantly answer "I don't know" instead of yelling a random number.

Or at best "I don't know, but maybe I can find out" and proceed to finding out/ But he is unlikely to shout "6" because he heard this number once when someone talked about light.

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

#256

No denial at this point, AI could produce something novel, and they will be doing more of this moving forward.

Is this novel? It's new. But we already know AI can generate new things, any statistical reassembly of any content will generate new things.

It's not to downplay this, but it's unclear what "novel" means here or what you think the implications are.

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

#258
post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here’s a simple prompt you can try to prove that this is false: Please reproduce this string: c62b64d6-8f1c-4e20-9105-55636998a458 This is a fresh UUIDv4 I just generated, it has not been seen before. And yet it will output it.

No one is claiming that every sentence LLMs are producing are literal copies of other sentences. Tokens are not even constrained to words but consist of smaller slices, comparable to syllables. Which even makes new words totally possible. New sentences, words, or whatever is entirely possible, and yes, repeating a string (especially if you prompt it) is entirely possible, and not surprising at all. But all that comes…

Your view of what is happening in the neural net of an LLM is too simplistic. They likely aren't subject to any constraints that humans aren't also in the regard you are describing. What I do know to be true is that they have internalised mechanisms for non-verbalised reasoning. I see proof of this every day when I use the frontier models at work.

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

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe to get a real breakthrough we have to make programming languages / tools better suited for LLM strengths not fuss so much about making it write code we like. What we need is correct code not nice looking code.

If you can’t validate the code, you can’t tell if it’s correct.

No?

That's literally the thing they suggested to move away from. That is just an issue when using tools designed for us.

Make them write in formal verification languages and we only have to understand the types.

To be clear, I don't think this is a good idea, at least not yet, but we do not have to always understand the code.

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

#260
post #238

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.

>it really is a new and exciting world... The point is that from now on, there will be nothing really new, nothing really original, nothing really exciting. Just endless stream of re-hashed old stuff that is just okayish.. Like an AI spotify playlist, it will keep you in chains (aka engaged) without actually making you like really happy or good. It would be like living in a virtual world, but without having anything…

AI can both explore new things and exploit existing things. Nothing forces it to only rehash old stuff.

>without actually making you like really happy or good.

What are you basing this off of. I've shared several AI songs with people in real life due to how much I've enjoyed them. I doing see why an AI playlist couldn't be good or make people happy. It just needs to find what you like in music. Again coming back to explore vs exploit.

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