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Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

science.org

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Re: Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

#51

Post by Spacecosmonaut »

wongarsu wrote: post #35
Spacecosmonaut wrote: post #24

Accelerationists may argue that the eroding of proper attribution and proof verification by humans is a meaningless short term struggle of a dying field. Mathematics seems to be entering an era where human + machine maximizes performance, much like chess in the 1990s. However, imagine a future where even talented mathematicians are nothing but noise in the machine (as is the case in chess now). A future where AI gene…

Much like for many the point of chess is that it's played by humans, with truly superhuman AI relegated to a training aid, mathematics is in many ways about human comprehension. You can use AI to find and proof new theorems. But if you get to the point where humans can't understand it, is it even still math?

Perhaps P=NP. The new algorithms are handed down to us. We can apply them without fundamentally understanding why P=NP.

Re: Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

#52

Post by sylware »

Are maths AI models now using "tools", aka formal solvers?

I understand that the "language interface" of a "maths AI" could be some specialized trained LLM (Large Language Model) that to convey, with human language, "high level" mathematical mental contructs and intuition.

But then, you would need some models which does the reasoning using formal mathematical solvers (and probably a ton of "scratch" memory, it would be interesting to see how those models end up storing "mathematical" lema data). I guess you can have ML (Machine Learning) for those models on 'general maths', but also we can think about more mathematically focused ML for a specific problem, area, etc. And in the end, ML for maths, would it be mostly permutations of truth statements fed to a neural net?

When we were talking about "AI", one decade ago, that was what most had in mind (it may help a bit in physics, but it seems less likely, because reality/experiments are hard to teach to "AI"s).

If that becomes a reality (aka easy hardware access, and some "working" models), mathematicians will have to be as good in maths than in maths ML. And this is were there is an issue: training honestely good mathematical human brains may become very hard with some broad availability of good general maths reasoning "AIs".

Re: Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

#53

Post by cryo32 »

thesamethrowawa wrote: post #32
cryo32 wrote: post #4

As a mathematician by trade I think they’re overblowing it. You can choose to use it or not. I choose not to because I enjoy the process. But I’m not doing formal research or getting paid to do it these days. I will note that the average corporate mathematical modelling is usually a fucking circus so adding AI might make it better.

OOI, and my own total ignorance, what does a mathematician by trade do if they are not doing formal research? What does corporate modelling entail?

Well I rather like to be paid more than a mathematician so left academia rather quickly. In my case corporate modelling mostly involves making prediction models based on shitty data and metrics to make poorly contrived business decisions that lose millions of dollars.

Re: Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

#54

Post by cryo32 »

ryan_n wrote: post #9
cryo32 wrote: post #4

As a mathematician by trade I think they’re overblowing it. You can choose to use it or not. I choose not to because I enjoy the process. But I’m not doing formal research or getting paid to do it these days. I will note that the average corporate mathematical modelling is usually a fucking circus so adding AI might make it better.

> You can choose to use it or not This is becoming less and less true unless you're specifically talking about usage of it outside of a work environment. Many work places are requiring people to use it and/or tracking usage. I don't know about in academic settings, but I'd imagine it's becoming heavily used there too?

My academic connections that I keep in touch with never really left the 1990s. And no one is pushing them on AI.

Re: Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

#55

Post by dhfbshfbu4u3 »

pjc50 wrote: post #49
dhfbshfbu4u3 wrote: post #47

In a year, none of this will really matter. Intelligence is now a scalable resource independent of biological constraints. Everyone will use it because the system will no longer afford them the luxury of time. In a decade (maybe sooner), references won’t matter either.

Does it matter whether any of this is correct? (Mathematics at least has the potential for automated non-AI proof checking, although I don't think that's as widely used as you'd expect)

Does it matter if the Leiden Declaration is correct? To the humans, maybe but not in the bigger picture.

At scale, correctness and reward are becoming increasingly disconnected. Example: capital continues to compound regardless of whether it reflects underlying human welfare, just as information can spread regardless of whether it is true. Reality still matters, of course. If you want airplanes to stay in the air, somebody eventually has to be correct. The problem is that our economic and social systems are becoming less effective at distinguishing between what is true and what is merely rewarded.

Re: Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

#57

Post by cryo32 »

alpinisme wrote: post #34
cryo32 wrote: post #4

As a mathematician by trade I think they’re overblowing it. You can choose to use it or not. I choose not to because I enjoy the process. But I’m not doing formal research or getting paid to do it these days. I will note that the average corporate mathematical modelling is usually a fucking circus so adding AI might make it better.

The choice only remains if using it isn’t a huge multiplier. If it is a huge multiplier/accelerator, then for a while it will be ambiguous and the choice will remain. But as time goes on, the gains of using it will be so apparent and the advantage of the people who use it so great (in publication numbers, hiring, etc) that it will force others to. I don’t say that with any particular relish. But I am skeptical of the…

I don't think all universities or research agencies are particularly pressed on this. I mean my daughter is a notable researcher in a scientific field and they have absolutely no pressure to use AI to pump out papers or deliver value quickly.

Re: Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

#58

Post by ck2 »

I still don't understand how "AI" is ready for serious use beyond entertainment purposes

Every time I ask ChatGPT to make a table for a subject I know well, I will find an error in one of the results and it is very confident about it until I question it in detail

Every time I ask ChatGPT for nutritional breakdown of some dense food source and give it a quantity like 8 ounces and ask for the weight of each ingredient, the weights will be wrong and add up to more than the original weight of 8 ounces

These are variations of the old "how many Rs in strawberry" problem, it's still not solved, "AI" cannot reassemble a complex problem properly

A lot of what it tells me in detail about some subjects sounds suspiciously like Reddit posts reassembled out of order

Re: Mathematicians issue warning as AI rapidly gains ground

#60

Post by BigGreenJorts »

turzmo wrote: post #48

Much of math (or science) research has the strange quality of being mostly curiosity-driven, but having giant benefits that occasionally spin out to the public. Some questions are more urgent and practical. My feeling is that the more directly practical a question is, the more likely the research community is to support AI usage in that question. The annoying thing about recent AI advances is that they target questio…

Sounds like yet another example of how AI is kneecapping industries from the bottom by "removing the barrier to entry" but really just removing the training path by doing the work itself with no guidance for juniors.
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