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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

#361

Post by emil-lp »

rramadass wrote: post #86

Mathematician Ken Ono ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Ono ) gives a well nuanced viewpoint on AI in Mathematics (and more) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGZOi-7haCw He states that he struggled to come up with problems which would be challenging for AI to solve (at the below site) and thus forced to accept that mathematicians have to rethink their profession. FrontierMath: Benchmarking AI against advanced math…

You don't think this is relevant to his perspective?

> In 2025 he left academia to become "Founding Mathematician" of Axiom Math in Palo Alto, California to research the application of artificial intelligence to fundamental mathematics.

Re: Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

#362

Post by youareartree »

ericmcer wrote: post #334
stephc_int13 wrote: post #217

I see any kind automation as a good thing as long as it is reliable enough. We stopped copying books manually a long time ago, and the craft was lost, most of us can't do complex calculations manually etc. but it does not matter as long as we can rely on calculators and computers to do it. At this stage, the current wave of AI is not reliable enough that it would be safe to lose the abilities it can replace. The fail…

Automating manual labor or repetitive brainless tasks is way different from automating high skill knowledge work. I agree that automation is good when it frees us up for higher pursuits, but what is the end goal? All human labor is replaced? No human can produce anything of value relative to a machine? What does our life look like then?

[dead]

Re: Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

#363

Post by rramadass »

emil-lp wrote: post #361
rramadass wrote: post #86

Mathematician Ken Ono ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Ono ) gives a well nuanced viewpoint on AI in Mathematics (and more) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGZOi-7haCw He states that he struggled to come up with problems which would be challenging for AI to solve (at the below site) and thus forced to accept that mathematicians have to rethink their profession. FrontierMath: Benchmarking AI against advanced math…

You don't think this is relevant to his perspective? > In 2025 he left academia to become "Founding Mathematician" of Axiom Math in Palo Alto, California to research the application of artificial intelligence to fundamental mathematics.

No.

Understand first what Axiom Math does (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abYcV5LHMG4). It is only after he realized the possibilities of AI that he started Axiom Math with a student he mentored.

Re: Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

#364

Post by cyclopeanutopia »

dyauspitr wrote: post #343
fc417fc802 wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are wild claims that you can't possibly prove. They are typically assumed to be the case to the extent that we even think about them but in the end are largely unanswerable philosophical questions.

It’s not a claim, it’s a pretty self apparent fact. To wrap your head around this, as the simplest example 2+2=4 doesn’t change anywhere or under any different physical law. It’s as universal as you can get. There’s nothing philosophical about this.

It only means that you have no imagination.

Re: Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

#365

Post by oblio »

gowld wrote: post #319
oblio wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is actually a very old AI insight, acknowledged at least as early as the 80s, let me see if I can find the quote. Found it: > Rodney Brooks explains that, according to early AI research, intelligence was "best characterized as the things that highly educated male scientists found challenging", such as chess, symbolic integration, proving mathematical theorems and solving complicated word algebra problems. "The t…

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

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

Way to miss the mark (and also shift the discussion to woke conversation points on a comment from 4+ decades ago).

The point of his entire comment is that it seems like the "hard things" (aka abstract science) will be a lot harder for AI than "easy things" (a 5 year old or a dog understanding their environment in great detail, from depth perception to smells, sounds, etc, etc).

Your comment looks like it was written by exactly the kind of man Brooks was mocking.

Re: Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

#366

Post by meristohm »

oblio wrote: post #358
jrflowers wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If the clog involves toilet paper, I'd rather not put a brush in that. Here's how I use a plunger effectively: Submerge it and then angle it to swap out some air for liquid, so you have more mass to push into the pipe. Tip it back upright, then slowly push down, relax and let the bell fill back up with water, and repeat, finding a resonant frequency where the pushed water doesn't just jet out the sides (due to imperfect seal) but because there's a pressure-wave action the clog gets moved in and out repeatedly until it breaks down enough for water to scoot by. Then one more flush to clean the plunger.
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