Earlier quoted context omitted.
That question is equivalent to asking a human to add the wavelengths of those two colors and divide it by 3.
Why is that?
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Epoch confirms GPT5.4 Pro solved a frontier math open problem
381–390 of 744 posts
Re: Epoch confirms GPT5.4 Pro solved a frontier math open problem
#382Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, but it does mean that you should know we don't understand what intelligence is, and that maybe LLMs are actually intelligent and humans have the appearance of intelligence, for all we know.
You're just defining intelligence as "undefined", which okay, now anything is anything. What is the point of that? Indeed, there's quite a lot of work that's been done on what these terms mean. The fields of neuroscience and cognitive science have contributed a lot to the area, and obviously there are major areas of philosophy that discuss how we should frame the conversation or seek to answer questions. We have more…
Our intelligence is related to brain structures, not all intelligence. You can't get to things like "what all intelligence, in general, is" from "what our intelligence is" any more than you can say that all food must necessarily be meat because sausages exist.
Re: Epoch confirms GPT5.4 Pro solved a frontier math open problem
#383Earlier quoted context omitted.
LLMs can often guess the final answer, but the intermediate proof steps are always total bunk. When doing math you only ever care about the proof, not the answer itself.
Once you have a working proof, no matter how bad, you can work towards making it nicer. It's like refactoring in programming. If your proof is machine checkable, that's even easier.
I haven't had success in getting AI's to output working proofs.
You'd need a completely different post-training and agent stack for that.
Re: Epoch confirms GPT5.4 Pro solved a frontier math open problem
#384Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're just defining intelligence as "undefined", which okay, now anything is anything. What is the point of that? Indeed, there's quite a lot of work that's been done on what these terms mean. The fields of neuroscience and cognitive science have contributed a lot to the area, and obviously there are major areas of philosophy that discuss how we should frame the conversation or seek to answer questions. We have more…
Our intelligence is related to brain structures, not all intelligence. You can't get to things like "what all intelligence, in general, is" from "what our intelligence is" any more than you can say that all food must necessarily be meat because sausages exist.
But... we're talking about our intelligence. So obviously it's quite relevant. I didn't say that AI isn't intelligent, I said that we have good reason to believe that our intelligence is unique. And we do, a lot of good evidence.
I obviously don't believe that all intelligence is related to specific brain structure. Again, I'm a functionalist, so I believe that any structure that can exhibit the necessary functions would be equivalent in regards to intelligence.
None of this would commit me to (a) human exceptionalism (b) LLMs/ Agents being intelligent (c) LLMs/ Agents being intelligent in the way that humans are.
Re: Epoch confirms GPT5.4 Pro solved a frontier math open problem
#385Earlier quoted context omitted.
> born-again AI believer sigh
I honestly do think I'm being honest with myself. I have held it in my mind that I'm not impressed until it's innovative. That threshold seems to be getting crossed. I'm not saying, "I used to be an atheist, but then I realized that doesn't explain anything! So glad I'm not as dumb now!"
Somehow people don't need "faith" and "being impressed" to make a hammer or a car work.
(This shows that LLMs aren't tools yet.)
Re: Epoch confirms GPT5.4 Pro solved a frontier math open problem
#386Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am deeply baffled by AI denial at this point.
It's quite simple: it has yet to show it can actually be useful, and all the claims that it can have (so far) turned out to be self delusion if not deliberate lies. When the industry is run by grifters, you shouldn't really be surprised when people stop believing them.
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Re: Epoch confirms GPT5.4 Pro solved a frontier math open problem
#387Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think there's demonstrably very little difference at all between human and AI outputs, and that's exactly what freaks people out about it. Else they wouldn't be so obsessed with trying to find and define what makes it different. The Thesis of Everything is a Remix is that there is no difference in how any culture is produced. Different models will have a different flavor to their output in the same way as different…
> I think there's demonstrably very little difference at all between human and AI outputs Bold claim, as the internet is awash with counterexamples. In any case, as I think this conversation is trending towards theories of artistic expression, “AI content” will never be truly relatable until it can feel pleasure, pain, and other human urges. The first thing I often think about when I critically assess a piece of art,…
> Bold claim, as the internet is awash with counterexamples.
What do you consider a counterexample? Because I've been involved in local politics lately, and can say from experience that any foundation model is capable of more rational and detailed thought, and more creative expression, than most of the beloved members of my community.
If you're comparing AI to the pinnacle of human achievement, as another commenter pointed to Shakespeare, then I think the argument is already won in favor of AI.
Re: Epoch confirms GPT5.4 Pro solved a frontier math open problem
#388Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Writing a complex parser or certainly a compiler is a 1 - 3 month project, for example. 1. Estimating time completion of something that has been done multiple times before and an open problem that has not yet been solved is a different matter entirely. 1 to 3 months is an educated guess and more likely than not, an underestimate. 2. I do not think months long complex compilers and parsers are being routinely complet…
I don't get what either of your points is intended to demonstrate. Let's revisit the first post I replied to: > It's deeply surprising to me that LLMs have had more success proving higher math theorems than making successful consumer software As far as I can tell, they absolutely have not had more success in this area relative to making successful consumer software.
Well we are kind of arguing past each other aren't we ?
"More success" is a bit vague in this instance but building a compiler that would take a programmer 1 to 3 months is not comparable to this result regardless of whatever similarity exists in time completion estimates. That's the point.
You can publish a paper (and in fact the researchers plan to) off this result. A basic compiler is cool but otherwise unremarkable. It's been done many times before.
You are leaning too hard on how long the researchers (who again did not manage to solve the problem in their attempts) estimated this would take and the "moderately interesting" tag of again, what was still an open research problem.
This, alongside a few math and physics results that have cropped up in the last few months is easily more impressive than the vast majority of work being done with LLMs for software.
Re: Epoch confirms GPT5.4 Pro solved a frontier math open problem
#389I like to imagine that the number of consumed tokens before a solution is found is a proxy for how difficult a problem is, and it looks like Opus 4.6 consumed around 250k tokens. That means that a tricky React refactor I did earlier today at work was about half as hard as an open problem in mathematics! :)
You're glancing over the fact that mathematics uses only one token per variable `x = ...`, whereas software engineering best practices demand an excessive number of tokens per variable for clarity.
It's also a pretty silly thing to say difficulty = tokens. We all know line counts don't tell you much, and it shows in their own example.
Even if you did have Math-like tokenisation, refactoring a thousand lines of "X=..." to "Y=..." isnt a difficult problem even though it would be at least a thousand tokens. And if you could come up with E=mc^2 in a thousand tokens, does not make the two tasks remotely comparable difficulty.
Re: Epoch confirms GPT5.4 Pro solved a frontier math open problem
#390Earlier quoted context omitted.
Conrad Gessner had the very same complaint in the 16th century, noting the overabundance of printed books, fretting about shoddy, trivial, or error-filled works ( https://www.jstor.org/stable/26560192 )
So....what is your point?
Generations have grown and died in the time since your concern was first expressed. The world continues. Culture adapts.