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

epoch.ai

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

#471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most inventions are an interpolation of three existing ideas. These systems are very good at that.

I can't even find a good example of an invention that is not an interpolation.

The inclined plane, the wheel, shall I keep going?

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

#472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, it's not that, but it's nice of you to offer a straw man. Makes the argument flow better.

Not entirely a straw man. What is the purpose of storing and retrieving LLMs at a fixed state if not to guarantee a specific performance? Wouldn’t a strong model of intelligence be capable of, to extend your analogy, running without having its hippocampus lobotomized? Given the precariousness of managing LLM context windows, I don’t think it’s particularly unfair to assume that LLMs that learn without limit become ve…

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

#473
post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs can generate anything by design. LLMs can't understand what they are generating so it may be true, it may be wrong, it may be novel or it may be known thing. It doesn't discern between them, just looks for the best statistical fit. The core of the issue lies in our human language and our human assumptions. We humans have implicitly assigned phrases "truly novel" and "solving unsolved math problem" a certain mean…

If LLMs can come up with formerly truly novel solutions to things, and you have a verification loop to ensure that they are actual proper solutions, I don't understand why you think they could never come up with solutions to impressive problems, especially considering the thread we are literally on right now? That seems like a pure assertion at this point that they will always be limited to coming up with truly novel…

It probably can, but won't realize that and it won't be efficient in that. LLM can shuffle tokens for an enormous number of tries and eventually come up with something super impressive, though as you yourself have mentioned, we would need to have a mandatory verification loop, to filter slop from good output and how to do it outside of some limited areas is a big question. But assuming we have these verification loops and are running LLMs for years to look for something novel. It's like running an energy grid of small country to change a few dozen of database entries per hour. Yes, we can do that, but it's kinda weird thing to do. But it is novel, no argue about that. Just inefficient.

We never had a big demand to define how humans are intelligent or conscious etc, since it is too hard and was relegated to a some frontier researchers. And with LLMs we now do have such demand but the science wasn't ready. So we are all collectively searching in the dark, trying to define if we are different from these programs if not how. I certainly can't do that. I do know that LLMs are useful, but I also suspect that AI (aka AGI nowadays) is not yet reached.

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

#474

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…

I've been working on a utility that lets me "see through" app windows on macOS [1] (I was a dev on Apple's Xcode team and have a strong understanding of how to do this efficiently using private APIs). I wondered how Claude Code would approach the problem. I fully expected it to do something most human engineers would do: brute-force with ScreenCaptureKit. It almost instantly figured out that it didn't have to "see th…

Was it a novel solution for you or for everyone? Because that's a pretty big difference. A lot stuff novel for me would be something someone had been doing for decades somewhere.

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

#475
post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been working on a utility that lets me "see through" app windows on macOS [1] (I was a dev on Apple's Xcode team and have a strong understanding of how to do this efficiently using private APIs). I wondered how Claude Code would approach the problem. I fully expected it to do something most human engineers would do: brute-force with ScreenCaptureKit. It almost instantly figured out that it didn't have to "see th…

Was it a novel solution for you or for everyone? Because that's a pretty big difference. A lot stuff novel for me would be something someone had been doing for decades somewhere.

Unless you worked on the macOS content server directly you’d have no idea that my solution was even possible.

That fact that Claude skipped over all the obvious solutions is why I used the word novel.

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

#477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I'm not going to share either solution as this is actually a pretty useful utility that I plan on releasing, but the short answer is: 1) don't use ScreenCaptureKit, and 2) take advantage of what CGWindowListCreateImage() offers through the content server. This is a simple IPC mechanism that does not trigger all the SKC limitations (i.e., no multi-space or multi-desktop support). In fact, when using SKC, the use…

Huh, Claude one-shotted it out of a single message from me. Man, LLMs have gotten good.

It one-shotted what exactly?

Because LatencyKills is clearly describing a broader set of requirements related to their solution.

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

#478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't even find a good example of an invention that is not an interpolation.

The inclined plane, the wheel, shall I keep going?

Stand on a fallen log on a hillside and you'll interpolate pretty hard.

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

#479
post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was it a novel solution for you or for everyone? Because that's a pretty big difference. A lot stuff novel for me would be something someone had been doing for decades somewhere.

Unless you worked on the macOS content server directly you’d have no idea that my solution was even possible. That fact that Claude skipped over all the obvious solutions is why I used the word novel.

How confident are you that this knowledge was not part of the training data? Was there no stackoverflow questions/replies with it, no tech forum posts, private knowledge bases, etc?

Not trying to diminish its results, just one should always assume that LLMs have a rough memory on pretty much the whole of the internet/human knowledge. Google itself was very impressive back then in how it managed to dig out stuff interesting me (though it's no longer good at finding a single article with almost exact keywords...), and what makes LLMs especially great is that they combine that with some surface level transformation to make that information fit the current, particular need.

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

#480

I have long said I am an AI doubter until AI could print out the answers to hard problems or ones requiring tons of innovation. Assuming this is verified to be correct (not by AI) then I just became a believer. I would like to see a few more AI inventions to know for sure, but wow, it really is a new and exciting world. I really hope we use this intelligence resource to make the world better.

I remember there was a conversation between two super-duper VCs (dont remember who but famous ones), about how DeepSeek was a super-genius level model because it solved an intro-level (like week 1-2) electrodynamics problem stated in a very convoluted way.

While cool and impressive for an LLM, I think they oversold the feat by quite a bit.

I don't want to belittle the performance of this model, but I would like for someone with domain expertise (and no dog in the AI race, like a random math PhD) to come forward, and explain exactly what the problem exactly was, and how did the model contribute to the solution.

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