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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

#291

Post by paganel »

bogdan wrote: post #254
qsera wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

Each solvable problem contains its solution intrinsically, so to speak, it’s only a matter of time and consuming of resources to get to it. There’s nothing creative about it, which is I think what OP was alluding to (the creative part). I’m talking mostly mathematics.

There’s also a discussion to be made about maths not being intrinsically creative if AI automatons can “solve” parts of it, which pains me to write down because I had really thought that that wasn’t the case, I genuinely thought that deep down there was still something ethereal about maths, but I’ll leave that discussion for some other time.

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

#292

Post by Almondsetat »

konart wrote: post #143
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.

>But human researchers are also remixers. Some human researchers are also remixers to Some degree. Can you imagine AI coming up with refraction & separation lie Newton did?

AI does not have a physical body to make experiments in the real world and build and use equipment

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

#293

Post by gf000 »

famouswaffles wrote: post #188
slopinthebag wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The capabilities of a human far surpass every single AI to date Meaning however you (reasonably) define intelligence, if you compare humans to any AI system humans are overwhelmingly more capable. Defining "intelligence" as "solving a math equation" is not a reasonable definition of intelligence. Or else we'd be talking about how my calculator is intelligent. Of course computers can compute faster than we can, that…

>Meaning however you (reasonably) define intelligence, if you compare humans to any AI system humans are overwhelmingly more capable. Really ? Every Human ? Are you sure ? because I certainly wouldn't ask just any human for the things I use these models for, and I use them for a lot of things. So, to me the idea that all humans are 'overwhelmingly more capable' is blatantly false. >Defining "intelligence" as "solving…

> Really ? Every Human ?

Yes, in many ways absolutely. Just because a model is a better "Google" than my dummy friend doesn't mean that this same friend is more capable at countless cases.

> Meaningless comparison. You are looking at two completely different substrates. Do you realize how much compute it would take to run a full simulation of the human brain on a computer ? The most powerful super computer on the planet could not run this in real time.

Isn't that just more proof how efficient the human brain is? Especially that a wire has much better properties than water solutions in bags.

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

#294

Post by qsera »

bogdan wrote: post #254
qsera wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

Because economy. Look at marvel movies, do you think the latest one is really new? Or just a rehash of what they found working commercially? Look at all the AI generated blog posts that is flooding the internet..

LLMs might produce something new once in a long while due to blind luck, but if it can generate something that pushes the right buttons (aka not really creative) to majority of population, then that is what we will keep getting...

I don't think I have to elaborate on the "multiplying the bad" part as it is pretty well acknowledged..

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

#295

Post by staticassertion »

famouswaffles wrote: post #289
staticassertion wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's interesting context, where do you see that? I'm going off of the label "Moderately interesting". edit: I see in the full write up that the contributor says that they'd estimate an expert would take 1-3 months to do this. They also note that they came up with this solution independently but hadn't confirmed it.

https://epochai.substack.com/p/first-ai-solution-on-frontier... >The newly-solved problem came from Will Brian, who had placed it in the Moderately Interesting category. It is a conjecture from a paper he wrote with Paul Larson in 2019. They were unable to solve it at the time, or in several attempts since. Brian had this to say.

I actually still don't see the source for them trying several times, but we can take that for granted. Regardless, as I said:

1. It's labeled as "moderately interesting"

2. They said that they expect an expert could solve it in 1-3 months

3. They had already come up with the solution that the AI had but weren't convinced it would have worked

So how big was the gap here, do you think?

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

#296

Post by famouswaffles »

slopinthebag wrote: post #281
famouswaffles wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I never said that humans are better than LLM's along every axis. Rather, a reasonable definition of intelligence would necessarily encompass domains that LLM's are either incapable of or inferior to us. So all humans are overwhelmingly more intelligent but cannot even manage to be as capable in a significant number of domains ? That's not what overwhelming means. >I would consider statistical reasoning systems that…

> So all humans are overwhelmingly more intelligent but cannot even manage to be as capable in a significant number of domains When the amount of domains in which humans are more capable than LLM's vastly exceeds the amount of domains in which LLM's are more capable than humans, yes. I also agree that we don't have a great understanding of either human or LLM intelligence, but we can at least observe major difference…

[dead]

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

#297

Post by charcircuit »

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…

>it is fundamentally impossible for an image recognition AI to suddenly write an essay

You can already do this today with every frontier modal. You can give it an image and have it write an essay from it. Both patches (parts of images) and text get turned into tokens for the language the LLM is learning.

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

#298

Post by razorbeamz »

gf000 wrote: post #237
razorbeamz wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What calculations? Do you mean "3+5" or a generic Turing-machine like model? In either case, this "it's a language model" is a pretty dumb argument to make. You may want to reason about the fundamental architecture, but even that quickly breaks down. A sufficiently large neural network can execute many kinds of calculations. In "one shot" mode it can't be Turing complete, but in a weird technicality neither does your…

> What calculations? Do you mean "3+5" or a generic Turing-machine like model?

Either one. An LLM cannot solve 3+5 by adding 3 and 5. It can only "solve" 3+5 by knowing that within its training data, many people have written that 3+5=8, so it will produce 8 as an answer.

An LLM, similarly, cannot simulate a Turing machine. It can produce a text output that resembles a Turing machine based on others' descriptions of one, but it is not actually reading and writing bits to and from a tape.

This is why LLMs still struggle at telling you how many r's are in the word "strawberry". They can't count. They can't do calculations. They can only reproduce text based on having examined the human corpus's mathematical examples.

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

#299

Post by timschmidt »

qsera wrote: post #294
bogdan wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there will be nothing really new How is this the conclusion? Isn't this post about AI solving something new? What am I missing?

Because economy. Look at marvel movies, do you think the latest one is really new? Or just a rehash of what they found working commercially? Look at all the AI generated blog posts that is flooding the internet.. LLMs might produce something new once in a long while due to blind luck, but if it can generate something that pushes the right buttons (aka not really creative) to majority of population, then that is what…

That's literally all culture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJPERZDfyWc

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

#300

Post by [deleted] »

qnleigh wrote: post #288

I am kind of amazed at how many commenters respond to this result by confidently asserting that LLMs will never generate 'truly novel' ideas or problem solutions. > AI is a remixer; it remixes all known ideas together. It won't come up with new ideas > it's not because the model is figuring out something new > LLMs will NEVER be able to do that, because it doesn't exist It's not enough to say 'it will never be able t…

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