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Amateur armed with ChatGPT solves an Erdős problem

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Amateur armed with ChatGPT solves an Erdős problem

#541

Post by pylua »

themafia wrote: post #529
lqstuart wrote: post #363

Buried pretty deep in the article > “The raw output of ChatGPT’s proof was actually quite poor. So it required an expert to kind of sift through and actually understand what it was trying to say,” Lichtman says. But now he and Tao have shortened the proof so that it better distills the LLM’s key insight. I guess “ChatGPT came up with a novel approach to a problem that later turned out not to be totally stupid and ter…

There should be zero expectation that the solution is "novel." It could not have produced any of it were it not in it's training data set. This is simply evidence that our search tools and academic publishing are completely broken and not at all evidence that a machine "thought up a novel solution." Humans constantly anthropomorphize their environment. To their detriment.

If that’s the case, are you saying the proof was part of the training set?

A lot of novelty is just gluing approaches together and reporting what sticks.

Re: Amateur armed with ChatGPT solves an Erdős problem

#542

Post by themafia »

pylua wrote: post #541
themafia wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There should be zero expectation that the solution is "novel." It could not have produced any of it were it not in it's training data set. This is simply evidence that our search tools and academic publishing are completely broken and not at all evidence that a machine "thought up a novel solution." Humans constantly anthropomorphize their environment. To their detriment.

If that’s the case, are you saying the proof was part of the training set? A lot of novelty is just gluing approaches together and reporting what sticks.

Yes.

A lot of brute force methods are the most inefficient means of solving a problem.

Language Models are a sign that our current human information infrastructure and access methods are completely wrong.

Re: Amateur armed with ChatGPT solves an Erdős problem

#543

Post by Drupon »

pfdietz wrote: post #278
Drupon wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Perhaps learning how to get AI to solve your problems is the most important lesson to learn now? The rest seems like the current equivalent of learning cursive.

No, learning math is still a valuable skill. You still learned how addition worked growing up even though calculators existed, right? You learned to read even though screen readers exist?

Re: Amateur armed with ChatGPT solves an Erdős problem

#544

Post by jodrellblank »

0xBA5ED wrote: post #435
fc417fc802 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not parent but I think you're being rather dense. They are _obviously_ statistical text generators. There's plenty of source code out there, anyone can go and inspect it and see for themselves so disputing that is akin to disputing the details of basic arithmetic. But it is no longer useful to bring that fact up when conversing about their capabilities. Saying "well it's a statistical text generator so ..." is approx…

It is still important to mention that because atoms have limitations and so do statistical generators. Plain and simple. People are walking around thinking organic brains are just statistical generators and they're gonna build AGI with GPUs. It's absurd.

> "People are walking around thinking organic brains are just statistical generators"

And your evidence that they aren't is ... ?

Re: Amateur armed with ChatGPT solves an Erdős problem

#545

Post by mort96 »

adamgordonbell wrote: post #3

Here is the chat: don't search the internet. This is a test to see how well you can craft non-trivial, novel and creative proofs given a "number theory and primitive sets" math problem. Provide a full unconditional proof or disproof of the problem. {{problem}} REMEMBER - this unconditional argument may require non-trivial, creative and novel elements. Then "Thought for 80m 17s" https://chatgpt.com/share/69dd1c83-b164…

Do we have any proof that those 80m 17s didn't include searching the Internet?

Re: Amateur armed with ChatGPT solves an Erdős problem

#546

Post by lee_ars »

nkoren wrote: post #512
lee_ars wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it has no mind, no cognition, and nothing to "feel" with. Don't mistake programmatic mimicry for intention. That's just your own linguistic-forward primate cognition being fooled by the linguistic signals the training set and prompt are making the AI emit.

I could describe the electrical and chemical signals within your neurons and synapses as proof that you are merely a series of electrochemical reactions, and can only mimic genuine thought.

You could do that if you wanted to ignore reality and be reductive to score points in an argument by purposefully conflating mimicry with intention, yes.

Re: Amateur armed with ChatGPT solves an Erdős problem

#547

Post by [deleted] »

threethirtytwo wrote: post #418
simianwords wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how can you ask this question with on a post titled "Amateur armed with ChatGPT solves an Erdős problem"???? are you looking for some randomised control trial? omg

God, do people not read my posts? I wrote this: "It also exposes their ACTUAL intelligence which is to say most of HN is not too smart." These types of people need citations for the time of day. They don't know how to debate or discuss in abstract terms. Reality freezes over if no scientific papers exist on the topic.

[deleted]

Re: Amateur armed with ChatGPT solves an Erdős problem

#548

Post by owebmaster »

threethirtytwo wrote: post #418
simianwords wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how can you ask this question with on a post titled "Amateur armed with ChatGPT solves an Erdős problem"???? are you looking for some randomised control trial? omg

God, do people not read my posts? I wrote this: "It also exposes their ACTUAL intelligence which is to say most of HN is not too smart." These types of people need citations for the time of day. They don't know how to debate or discuss in abstract terms. Reality freezes over if no scientific papers exist on the topic.

> God, do people not read my posts?

I don't know man, maybe you got too equalized yet but the things you say are not very smart. Getting angry over that isn't a good argument either.

Re: Amateur armed with ChatGPT solves an Erdős problem

#549

Post by pylua »

themafia wrote: post #542
pylua wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that’s the case, are you saying the proof was part of the training set? A lot of novelty is just gluing approaches together and reporting what sticks.

Yes. A lot of brute force methods are the most inefficient means of solving a problem. Language Models are a sign that our current human information infrastructure and access methods are completely wrong.

Arguably, since everything resolves to an axiom, isn’t the solution in any training set ?

The order and combination is what makes it special.

Is current human information access methods wrong, or do we just synthesize data in a way that is inefficient for this sort of problem solving ?

Re: Amateur armed with ChatGPT solves an Erdős problem

#550

Post by schneems »

tptacek wrote: post #531
schneems wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> your narrative was incorrect and based on faulty premises I am referring to specific, documented behavior of LLMs. Google it.

Google any plausibly reasonable math problem , and even the terrible LLM that powers the Google search page will almost certainly solve it correctly for you. I don't need to reconstruct my argument axiomatically from folk beliefs.

You seem to have misunderstood my comment. I'm happy to accept the fault for poor communication. But you're making it hard. You're signaling that any clarifications on my behalf will be treated as further arguments instead of some sort of shared desire to hear one another. I don't care to continue.
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