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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

#421

Post by XCSme »

Madmallard wrote: post #199
salomonk_mur wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no such thing. All new ideas are derived from previous experiences and concepts.

The difference people are neglecting to point out is the experiences we have versus the experiences the AI has. We have at least 5 senses, our thoughts, feelings, hormonal fluctuations, sleep and continuous analog exposure to all of these things 24/7. It's vastly different from how inputs are fed into an LLM. On top of that we have millions of years of evolution toward processing this vast array of analog inputs.

So, just connect LLMs to lava lamps?

Jokes aside, imagine you give LLMs access to real-time, world-wide satellite imagery and just tell it to discover new patrerns/phenomens and corrrlations in the world.

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

#422

Post by gpderetta »

razorbeamz wrote: post #93
qq66 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I entered the prompt: > Write me a stanza in the style of "The Raven" about Dick Cheney on a first date with Queen Elizabeth I facilitated by a Time Travel Machine invented by Lin-Manuel Miranda It outputted a group of characters that I can virtually guarantee you it has never seen before on its own

Yes, but it has seen The Raven, it has seen texts about Dick Cheney, first dates, Queen Elizabeth, time machines and Lin Manuel Miranda. All of its output is based on those things it has seen.

In the days when Sussman was a novice, Minsky once came to him as he sat hacking at the PDP-6.

“What are you doing?”, asked Minsky.

“I am training a randomly wired neural net to play Tic-Tac-Toe” Sussman replied.

“Why is the net wired randomly?”, asked Minsky.

“I do not want it to have any preconceptions of how to play”, Sussman said.

Minsky then shut his eyes.

“Why do you close your eyes?”, Sussman asked his teacher.

“So that the room will be empty.”

At that moment, Sussman was enlightened.

-- from the jargon file

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

#423

Post by TeMPOraL »

qsera wrote: post #332
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…

It is like not trusting someone who attained highest score in some exam by by-hearting the whole text book, to do the corresponding job. Not very hard to understand.

Yet we do that all the time by hiring based on GPA/degree.

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

#424

Post by Gareth321 »

datsci_est_2015 wrote: post #336
NitpickLawyer wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't see this getting better. We went from 2 + 7 = 11 to "solved a frontier math problem" in 3 years, yet people don't think this will improve?

I’ve seen this style of take so much that I’m dying for someone to name a logical fallacy for it, like “appeal to progress” or something. Step away from LLMs for a second and recognize that “Yesterday it was X, so today it must be X+1” is such a naive take and obviously something that humans so easily fall into a trap of believing (see: flying cars).

In finance we say "past performance does not guarantee future returns." Not because we don't believe that, statistically, returns will continue to grow at x rate, but because there is a chance that they won't. The reality bias is actually in favour of these getting better faster, but there is a chance they do not.

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

#425

Post by XCSme »

aoeusnth1 wrote: post #146
XCSme wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if AI can have clever or new ideas, it still seems to be it combines existing knowledge and executes algoritms. I am not necessarily saying humans do something different either, but I have yet to see a novel solution from an AI that is not simply an extrapolation of current knowledge.

How would you know if it wasn't an extrapolation of current knowledge? Can you point me to somethings humans have done which isn't an extrapolation?

That was my point: "I am not necessarily saying humans do something different".

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

#426

Post by datsci_est_2015 »

timschmidt wrote: post #419
datsci_est_2015 wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re really going to make the claim that there are no counterexamples of human and AI output being indistinguishable on the internet? At least make the counterclaim that “those are from old models, not the newest ones”, that’s more intellectually invigorating than the comment you just provided.

> claim that there are no counterexamples of human and AI output being indistinguishable on the internet? Is that a claim I've made? I don't see it anywhere. I think a lot of people think that because they can get the AI to generate something silly or obviously incorrect, that invalidates other output which is on-par with top-level humans. It does not. Every human holds silly misconceptions as well. Brain farts. Fat…

> Is that a claim I've made?

Yes, you literally just said QED.

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

#427

Post by svara »

amelius wrote: post #364
svara wrote: post #340

The capabilities of AI are determined by the cost function it's trained on. That's a self-evident thing to say, but it's worth repeating, because there's this odd implicit notion sometimes that you train on some cost function, and then, poof, "intelligence", as if that was a mysterious other thing. Really, intelligence is minimizing a complex cost function . The leadership of the big AI companies sometimes imply some…

> But there is no mechanism to generate a model with capabilities beyond what is useful to minimize a specific cost function. Can you give some examples? It is not trivial that not everything can be written as an optimization problem. Even at the time advanced generalizations such as complex numbers can be said to optimize something, e.g. the number of mathematical symbols you need to do certain proofs, etc.

I think you're misreading me. My point isn't that you can't in principle state the optimization problem, but that it's much easier in some domains than in others, that this tracks with how AI has been progressing, and that progress in one area doesn't automatically mean progress in another, because current AI cost functions are less general than the cost functions that humans are working with in the world.

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

#428

Post by [deleted] »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #423
qsera wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is like not trusting someone who attained highest score in some exam by by-hearting the whole text book, to do the corresponding job. Not very hard to understand.

Yet we do that all the time by hiring based on GPA/degree.

[deleted]

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

#429

Post by hackinthebochs »

datsci_est_2015 wrote: post #361
trick-or-treat wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you back that up with some logic for me? I don't really play Go but I play chess, and it seems to me that most of what humans consider creativity in GM level play comes not in prep (studying opening lines/training) but in novel lines in real games (at inference time?). But that creativity absolutely comes from recalling patterns, which is exactly what OP criticizes as not creative(?!) I guess I'm just having trou…

How a model is trained is different than how a model is constructed. A model’s construction defines its fundamental limitations, e.g. a linear regressor will never be able to provide meaningful inference on exponential data. Depending on how you train it, though, you can get such a model to provide acceptable results in some scenarios. Mixing the two (training and construction) is rhetorically convenient (anthropomor…

Linear regression has well characterized mathematical properties. But we don't know the computational limits of stacked transformers. And so declaring what LLMs can't do is wildly premature.

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

#430

Post by gpderetta »

wobfan wrote: post #195
pastel8739 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here’s a simple prompt you can try to prove that this is false: Please reproduce this string: c62b64d6-8f1c-4e20-9105-55636998a458 This is a fresh UUIDv4 I just generated, it has not been seen before. And yet it will output it.

No one is claiming that every sentence LLMs are producing are literal copies of other sentences. Tokens are not even constrained to words but consist of smaller slices, comparable to syllables. Which even makes new words totally possible. New sentences, words, or whatever is entirely possible, and yes, repeating a string (especially if you prompt it) is entirely possible, and not surprising at all. But all that comes…

> It's like approaching an Italian who has never learned or heard any other language to speak French

Interesting similitude, because I expect an Italian to be able to communicate somewhat successfully with a French person (and vice versa) even if they do not share a language.

The two languages are likely fairly similar in latent space.

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