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Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

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Re: Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

#351

Post by 0xpgm »

ericmcer wrote: post #331
0xpgm wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Outsourcing the work deprives you of who you become by writing it. Just because AI can do something that resembles work should not mean outsourcing work to it. Mathematicians should not outsource their work to AI just like programmers should not outsource programming to AI. Humans working with AIs in a tight loop means intellectual work becomes more high-level and creative, but a human should always own the work, v…

I don't think that is possible. Humans have always taken the path of least resistance, especially when it comes to work/school. The idea that we just "trust everyone to carefully check and learn from AI output" as our barrier to human skillsets eroding is never going to work. There is an Anthropic engineering post on HM front page that addresses this exact issue: "... supervise the agent’s behavior via a human-in-the…

While it is human nature to minimize energy expended on doing things, progress has always come from the minority who prioritize disciplined thinking and action.

While minimizing energy spent worked well in historic periods where survival was hard, in this era of abundance and a complex, interconnected and fragile civilization, the same instinct becomes harmful.

Re: Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

#352

Post by 0xpgm »

dyauspitr wrote: post #314
0xpgm wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Outsourcing the work deprives you of who you become by writing it. Just because AI can do something that resembles work should not mean outsourcing work to it. Mathematicians should not outsource their work to AI just like programmers should not outsource programming to AI. Humans working with AIs in a tight loop means intellectual work becomes more high-level and creative, but a human should always own the work, v…

> Mathematicians should not outsource their work to AI just like programmers should not outsource programming to AI. There is a huge difference between the two. Mathematicians work on discovering fundamental truths of the universe that go into the corpus of human knowledge forever. Programmers create utilities.

I'd also prefer journalists not outsource their writing to AI and doctors not outsource their diagnosis to AI etc etc

Re: Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

#353

Post by jrflowers »

andai wrote: post #338
jrflowers wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm a guy and stereotypes exist for a reason. What reason is that?

A neural network is a machine for detecting patterns in data.

A plunger is a tool for dislodging turds and detritus in a toilet

Re: Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

#354

Post by cheikhcheikh »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #347
dyauspitr wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no circumstance where 2+2 does not equal 4. It is a literal fact. At the most fundamental level, you can only have a discreet or a non-discreet universe. If it’s discreet, there are countable things and 2+2 = 4 is true. In a non-discreet universe there are no countable things, but the universe itself is countable. If the universe were non-discreet and infinite, you could still count the infinities so it’s st…

You are making a number of assumptions there seemingly without realizing it even after I explicitly called it out. I'm not sure what to say other than to suggest that there's an entire field, analytic philosophy, concerned with such matters. You literally can't prove that you aren't a brain in a vat so I have no idea how you expect to make sweeping claims about the fundamental nature of reality. It is certainly conve…

Sure, technically you are correct, i cant prove that im not a schizophrenic hallucinating everything including 2+2=4 and including this discussion. But starting from a reasonable point of beliefs that we accept it is fair to say 2+2=4 will just hold universally when counting discrete things.

Re: Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

#355

Post by noufalibrahim »

jmalicki wrote: post #322
gowld wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brooks is weirdly sexist, but it's unsurprising that (higher) "intelligence" should mean things that are hard, not things that are easy.

But the hard things are things a child can do. The things like proving complicated theorems are things that are acquired by education within a lifetime, and that's why they're easy for AI. The things a child can do are acquired through millions of years of evolution. While they don't require much explicit education, that doesn't mean they're easier.

Fair enough but even thing acquired within a lifetime have a hierarchy. Many societies, for example, assume that the kids who are good in Math are smart but the ones who write well or are exemplary in "co-curricular" subjects simply aren't that bright.

As an example, the kid who can solve Math problems has less of an edge over AI than the kid who automatically becomes the captain of the neighbourhood football team but older human beings often assume that the former is smarter.

Re: Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

#356

Post by IcyWindows »

QuantumNoodle wrote: post #237
IcyWindows wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how this is different than things replaced decades ago: Music is a human endeavor and musical recordings hurt musicians, bands, orchestras, etc. Especially those starting out.

This feels like a troll comment, but I'll bite. Mathematics requires substantial creativity at every level. There is problem selection, conjecture formation, proof strategies, definitions, models, and explanations. Yes, it's constrained and guided by logic and rigor but having logic won't give you creativity. > Music is a human endeavor and musical recordings hurt musicians, bands, orchestras, etc. Especially those s…

I should be able to have a different opinion without being a troll.

My point is to say many things have been replaced by technology over the years, but people do them as hobbies.

Re: Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

#357

Post by Timwi »

0xpgm wrote: post #352
dyauspitr wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mathematicians should not outsource their work to AI just like programmers should not outsource programming to AI. There is a huge difference between the two. Mathematicians work on discovering fundamental truths of the universe that go into the corpus of human knowledge forever. Programmers create utilities.

I'd also prefer journalists not outsource their writing to AI and doctors not outsource their diagnosis to AI etc etc

I want doctors to outsource their diagnosis to AI if and only if the AI’s accuracy of diagnosis has surpassed that of the doctor.

Re: Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

#358

Post by oblio »

jrflowers wrote: post #353
andai wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A neural network is a machine for detecting patterns in data.

A plunger is a tool for dislodging turds and detritus in a toilet

I've always found that weird, do people really use plungers for that?

The toilet brush is a much better tool for unclogging the average toilet.

The plunger is actually meant to unclog sinks as far as I can tell, since it can attach much better to the sink and through its action can create pressure to unclog the much smaller sink drain pipe.

Re: Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

#359

Post by yieldcrv »

ccppurcell wrote: post #330
le-mark wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quants benefit from substantial bonus structure as part of their compensation.

Well exactly. One way to make money is to create a great product that solves a problem people have and market it effectively. That's a sort of idealised situation, an aspiration, but it's what I would call socially valuable. Another way is to help people who are already rich move their money around so that they become richer, in return for a fraction of the increase in wealth. I personally have no problem with that,…

> but that is not socially valuable.

Liquidity is extremely socially valuable from my perspective

I view the concept of "the market" as a construction project, that isn't finished. Not finished until every device around you can be traded instantly, with fractional shares even, with high liquidity and a capability for to the second price discovery, and there is a liquid options market on top of that.

The price of anything is not really resolved, its ability to be collateral and access a more liquid form of exchange at any time is not resolved.

Time is valuable, all of this reduces the time. There are still people waiting 90 days to access cash tied up in their home's equity, when another part of the market has split second collateralized lending. All of the market for anything should be that way.

The ability to exchange is valuable and wealthy people have liquidity issues. Poor people have liquidity issues. Everyone has a liquidity issue and doesn't know it.

Anything that slows things down slows down the whole construction project. A market with five 8 hour trading sessions a week with settlement the next day moves far slower than a market with three times as many trading sessions during the same time frame, where the trade is the settlement. The opportunities become endless for people aiming to accumulate more, the liquidity of traders to do actual business and negotiation and acquire goods and services and raise capital becomes vastly greater and far faster. Proving a new venture all the way to an exit becomes far faster, and results in the wealth distribution to the employees, vendors, and everyone else far faster and far greater.

That's what I see and look forward to. That has extremely high social value. Promoting liquidity and promoting velocity of transactions helps solve the actual reservations people have about the market at all. More paths for people on the poorer side of the bell curve to afford things.

Re: Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

#360

Post by seanmcdirmid »

ironman1478 wrote: post #97
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get it. LLMs don't have ego, they don't have the ability to say "no, this should be obvious, I'm not going to explain further", they are just token predictors, and given context, they can generate more tokens. If you don't understand how the answer was derived? You just ask more questions and it isn't going to get bored or annoyed, it will just try to answer the questions. Is that what is offending you so muc…

How do you make use of something that you don't understand?

The whole history of technology has been based on knowledge encapsulation and specialization, you don’t need to be a mechanic to drive a car.
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