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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

#501

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…

Yes! I call these the "it's just a stochastic parrot" crowd. Ironically, they are the stochastic parrots, because they're confidently repeating something that they read somehwere and haven't examined critically.

That would not be stochastic, just parroting

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

#502

I don't know why I am still perpetually shocked that the default assumption is that humans are somehow unique. It's this pervasive belief that underlies so much discussion around what it means to be intelligent. The null hypothesis goes out the window. People constantly make comments like "well it's just trying a bunch of stuff until something works" and it seems that they do not pause for a moment to consider whethe…

> I don't know why I am still perpetually shocked that the default assumption is that humans are somehow unique. Because, empirically, we have numerous unique and differentiable qualities, obviously. Plenty of time goes into understanding this, we have a young but rigorous field of neuroscience and cognitive science. Unless you mean "fundamentally unique" in some way that would persist - like "nothing could ever do w…

>But that does not mean that I have to think that the appearance of intelligence always is intelligence, or that an LLM/ Agent is doing what humans do.

You can think whatever you want, but an untestable distinction is an imaginary one.

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

#503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ability to learn and infer without absorbing millions of books and all text on internet really does make us special. And only at 20 watts!

Last I checked humans didn't pop into existence doing that. It happened after billions of years of brute force, trial and error evolution. So well done for falling into the exact same trap the OP cautions. Intelligence from scratch requires a mind boggling amount of resources, and humans were no different.

How is that relevant? The human brain is at the point of birth (or some time before that). We compare that with an LLM model doing inference. The training part is irrelevant, the same way the human brains' evolution is.

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

#504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, to review this thread - OP asked for someone to make a logical argument for the separation of “training” from “model” - I made the argument - You cherry picked an argument against my specific example and made an appeal to emergent complexity - I pointed out that emergent complexity isn’t limitless - “the only people making unsupported claims in this thread are those trying to deflate LLM capabilities”

You made a pretty nonsensical argument, pretty much seems like the big standard for these arguments. What does linear regression have to do with the limitations of a stacked transfer ? Absolutely nothing. This is the problem here. You don't know shit and just make up whatever. You can see people doing the same thing in GPT-1, 2, 3, 4 threads all telling us why LLMs will never be able to do thing it manages to do late…

> You don’t know shit

lol. Why so emotionally charged? Are you perhaps worried that you’ve invested too much time and effort into a technology that may not deliver what influencers have been promising for years? Like a proverbial bagholder?

> What does linear regression have to do with the limitations of a stacked transfer ? Absolutely nothing. This is the problem here.

We’re talking about fundamental concepts of modeling in this subthread. LLMs, despite what influencers may tell you, are simply models. I’ll even throw you a bone and admit they are models for intelligence. But they are still models, and therefore all of the things that we have learned about “models” since Plato are still relevant. Most importantly, since Plato we’ve known that “models” have fundamental limits vs. what they try to represent, otherwise they would be a facsimile, not a model.

> You can see people doing the same thing in GPT-1, 2, 3, 4 threads all telling us why LLMs will never be able to do thing it manages to do later.

I hope you enjoy winning these imaginary arguments against these imaginary comments. The fundamental limitations of LLMs discussed since GPT-1 have never been addressed by changing the architecture of the underlying model. All of the improvements we’ve experienced have been due to (1) improvements in training regime and (2) harnesses / heuristics (e.g. Agents).

Now, care to provide a counterargument that shows you know a little more than “shit”?

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

#505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And so declaring what LLMs can't do is wildly premature. The opposite is true as well. Emergent complexity isn’t limitless. Just like early physicists tried to explain the emergent complexity of the universe through experimentation and theory, so should we try to explain the emergent complexity of LLMs through experimentation and theory. Specifically not pseudoscience, though.

>so should we try to explain the emergent complexity of LLMs through experimentation and theory. Physicists had the real world to verify theories and explanations against. So far anyone 'explaining the emergent complexity of LLMs through experimentation and theory' is essentially just making stuff up nobody can verify.

Well that’s why I provided the caveat “specifically not pseudoscience”, which is, as you described, “just making stuff up nobody can verify”.

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

#506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think evolutionary pressures are the best explanation for why humans were able to posit the Poincaré conjecture and solve it? While our mental architecture evolved over a very long time, we still learn from miniscule amounts of data compared to LLMs.

Yeah. What else would it be ? A brain capable of doing that was clearly the result of evolutionary pressures.

But there is no evolutionary pressure for the Poincaré conjecture, we were never optimized for that in particular, unlike these kinds of LLMs.

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

#507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ability to learn and infer without absorbing millions of books and all text on internet really does make us special. And only at 20 watts!

We have a tremendous amount of raw information flowing through our brains 24/7 from before we are born, from the external world through all our senses and from within our minds as it attempts to make sense of that information, make predictions, generally reason about our existence, hallucinate alternative realities, etc. etc. If you were able to somehow capture all that information in full detail as you've had access…

Humans are "multi-modal". Sure we get plenty of non-textual information, but LLMs were trained on basically every human-written world ever. They definitely see many orders of magnitude more language than any human has ever seen. And yet humans get fluent based after 3+ years.

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

#508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Logical fallacies are vastly overrated. Unless the conversation is formal logic in the first place, "logical fallacies" are just a way to apply quick pattern matching to dismiss people without spending time on more substantive responses. In this case, both you and the other are speculating about the near future of a thing, neither of you knows.

Hard to make a more substantive response when the OP’s entire comment was a one-sentence logical fallacy. I’m not cherry-picking here.

> In this case, both you and the other are speculating about the near future of a thing, neither of you knows.

One of us is making a much grander claim than the other:

  - LLMs have limitless potential for growth; because they are not capable of something today does not mean they won’t be capable of it tomorrow
  - LLMs have fundamental limitations due to their underlying architecture and therefore are not limitless in capability

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

#509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>so should we try to explain the emergent complexity of LLMs through experimentation and theory. Physicists had the real world to verify theories and explanations against. So far anyone 'explaining the emergent complexity of LLMs through experimentation and theory' is essentially just making stuff up nobody can verify.

Well that’s why I provided the caveat “specifically not pseudoscience”, which is, as you described, “just making stuff up nobody can verify”.

If you say not pseudoscience and then make up pseudoscience anyway then what's the point? The field has not advanced anywhere enough in understanding for convoluted explanations about how LLMs can never do x to be anything but pseudoscience.

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

#510
post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that point. The biological components are the same, but emergent behavior is a thing. So both the scale and the number of connections/way they connect have surpassed some limit after which cognitive capabilities increased severalfold to the point that humans "took over the world". And arguably further increase in intelligence seems to fall into a diminishing returns category, compared to this previous b…

Yeah, I don't know that there's such a jump. Dogs, for example, clearly communicate, both with us and with each other. They don't have language, but they also don't lack communication skills. To me, language is just "better communication" rather than a qualitatively different thing.

You may want to watch this video: https://youtu.be/e7wFotDKEF4?is=bl5TPvk9_mdnG3Om

Human language is way above what communication animals show. We don't really know what's the exact boundary, but again, the difference is significant and not just "scaled up".

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