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Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

science.org

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Re: Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

#31

Post by dchftcs »

silveraxe93 wrote: post #15
19f191ty wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's not the most important part. It can be argued that most important part is asking the right questions

Assume someone solves P=NP Do you think Stephen Cook and Leonid Levin deserve more credit than whoever solved it?

If the problem resolves to P=NP, that result would probably be more celebratee than being able to formulate the problem, but being able to formulate the problem and get people interested in it is probably worth more than the average primal dual trick to prove a polylog integrality gap for some integer linear program.

Re: Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

#32

Post by thesamethrowawa »

cryo32 wrote: post #4

As a mathematician by trade I think they’re overblowing it. You can choose to use it or not. I choose not to because I enjoy the process. But I’m not doing formal research or getting paid to do it these days. I will note that the average corporate mathematical modelling is usually a fucking circus so adding AI might make it better.

OOI, and my own total ignorance, what does a mathematician by trade do if they are not doing formal research? What does corporate modelling entail?

Re: Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

#33

Post by psychoslave »

i_am_a_peasant wrote: post #12
19f191ty wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's not the most important part. It can be argued that most important part is asking the right questions

I agree with both OP and you

I disagree with everyone, self included, but especially with Cretans.

Re: Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

#34

Post by alpinisme »

cryo32 wrote: post #4

As a mathematician by trade I think they’re overblowing it. You can choose to use it or not. I choose not to because I enjoy the process. But I’m not doing formal research or getting paid to do it these days. I will note that the average corporate mathematical modelling is usually a fucking circus so adding AI might make it better.

The choice only remains if using it isn’t a huge multiplier. If it is a huge multiplier/accelerator, then for a while it will be ambiguous and the choice will remain. But as time goes on, the gains of using it will be so apparent and the advantage of the people who use it so great (in publication numbers, hiring, etc) that it will force others to.

I don’t say that with any particular relish. But I am skeptical of the choice angle past a certain point.

Re: Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

#35

Post by wongarsu »

Spacecosmonaut wrote: post #24

Accelerationists may argue that the eroding of proper attribution and proof verification by humans is a meaningless short term struggle of a dying field. Mathematics seems to be entering an era where human + machine maximizes performance, much like chess in the 1990s. However, imagine a future where even talented mathematicians are nothing but noise in the machine (as is the case in chess now). A future where AI gene…

Much like for many the point of chess is that it's played by humans, with truly superhuman AI relegated to a training aid, mathematics is in many ways about human comprehension. You can use AI to find and proof new theorems. But if you get to the point where humans can't understand it, is it even still math?

Re: Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

#36

Post by kleyd »

silveraxe93 wrote: post #5

> However, the declaration argues math is more than a machine for producing correct answers. There might be more to maths than that, but that is definitely the most important part. I love science funding. But not because it's a jobs program for nerds.

The wording in the declaration may be a bit romanticized. But the points are valid:

Is an 80 year old unsolved problem maybe unsolved because it was never prioritized? Some problems stay unsolved because few people consider them worth working on.

Who is going to validate the results? Or do we skip that, with the risk of flooding the literature and collective understanding with unverified proofs?

Re: Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

#37

Post by TrackerFF »

DrScientist wrote: post #19
TrackerFF wrote: post #16

I've said it before, but there's a massive risk that we simply stop educating researchers. So much of a Ph.D revolves around the person learning how to do research. They learn how to read papers and literature rigorously. They get low-hanging fruits to practice on, which can take months. Their funding doesn't come from thin air either. So what happens when the group leaders would rather spend money on compute, and ge…

> Furthermore, the access to compute and capital could end up be the defining factor between researchers and research groups. That's not new - especially in the experimental sciences ( ie perhaps more than maths ) - where the ability to have access to the latest kit is often what determines success - a huge amount of science progress is driven by new experimental technology rather than smart people thinking beautiful…

Absolutely, but at least in the pure / less applied fields, access to computation hasn't really been that critical. The more towards the pure and theoretical, less so.

But now you have people like Gowers and Tao, pure mathematicians, hyping up what the SOTA models can do - and I figure they both are getting access and tokens us mortals can't afford.

So I guess the question is - will everything be as expensive as applied fields?

Re: Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

#38

Post by rowanG077 »

psyklic wrote: post #25
silveraxe93 wrote: post #5

> However, the declaration argues math is more than a machine for producing correct answers. There might be more to maths than that, but that is definitely the most important part. I love science funding. But not because it's a jobs program for nerds.

The most important part of math is advancing human understanding. A correct answer by itself is not as important as understanding why it is correct.

Once you now something is correct, with a proof. It is MUCH easier to understand why it is correct. Than to start from a slate that you don't even know whether something is correct or not. In that sense AI that can just solve high level math problems is immensely useful. It allows a mathematician to explore ideas at a much more rapid pace.

Re: Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

#39

Post by smath »

silveraxe93 wrote: post #5

> However, the declaration argues math is more than a machine for producing correct answers. There might be more to maths than that, but that is definitely the most important part. I love science funding. But not because it's a jobs program for nerds.

This reminded me of my 11 yr old who, when I give her math problems to solve, is too focused on “getting the right answer”. I’ve told her plainly, I don’t care if you get the right answer right now, I want to see your reasoning. She has yet to understand this.

Re: Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

#40

Post by conformist »

silveraxe93 wrote: post #5

> However, the declaration argues math is more than a machine for producing correct answers. There might be more to maths than that, but that is definitely the most important part. I love science funding. But not because it's a jobs program for nerds.

> The authors warn the consequences are already becoming visible. AI-generated papers could overwhelm peer-review systems with low-quality work …

It seems like a key problem here is that peer-review is expected but not explicitly funded/rewarded while it is probably one of the aspects where humans still add a lot of value. Academia’s incentives are hugely misaligned (… as usual unfortunately).

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