Scientific American going out of business next lol, weak headline. Chat GPT let's have a better headline for the God among Men that realized the capability of the new tool, many underestimate or puff up needlessly. Fun times we live in. One love all.
Amateur armed with ChatGPT solves an Erdős problem
61–70 of 607 posts
Re: Amateur armed with ChatGPT solves an Erdős problem
#62Re: Amateur armed with ChatGPT solves an Erdős problem
#63Re: Amateur armed with ChatGPT solves an Erdős problem
#64The LLM took an entirely different route, using a formula that was well known in related parts of math, but which no one had thought to apply to this type of question. Of course LLMs are still absolutely useless at actual maths computation, but I think this is one area where AI can excel --- the ability to combine many sources of knowledge and synthesise, may sometimes yield very useful results. Also reminds me of th…
Also just the sheer value of brute force. 80 hours! 80 hours of just trying shit!
How long do you figure it’d take to solve the problem yourself?
Re: Amateur armed with ChatGPT solves an Erdős problem
#65The LLM took an entirely different route, using a formula that was well known in related parts of math, but which no one had thought to apply to this type of question. Of course LLMs are still absolutely useless at actual maths computation, but I think this is one area where AI can excel --- the ability to combine many sources of knowledge and synthesise, may sometimes yield very useful results. Also reminds me of th…
Wait, what do you mean "LLMs are still absolutely useless at actual maths computation"? I rely on them constantly for maths (linear algebra, multivariable calc, stat) --- literally thousands of problems run through GPT5 over the last 12 months, and to my recollection zero failures. But maybe you're thinking of something more specific?
What tier are you using? I have run lots of problems and am very impressed, but I find stupid errors a lot more frequently than that, e.g., arithmetic errors buried in a derivation or a bad definition, say 1/15 times. I would love to get zero failures out of thousands of (what sounds like college-level math) posed problems.
Re: Amateur armed with ChatGPT solves an Erdős problem
#66At this point we should make a GitHub repo with a huge list of unsolved “dry lab” problems and spin up a harness to try and solve them all every new release.
Re: Amateur armed with ChatGPT solves an Erdős problem
#67I wonder if the rationalizations people come up with for why this isn't real intelligence will be as creative as ChatGPTs solution.
I think one day the VCs will have given the monkeys on typewriters enough money that these kinds of comments can be generated without human intervention.
Re: Amateur armed with ChatGPT solves an Erdős problem
#68My big question with all these announcements is: How many other people were using the AI on problems like this, and, failing? Given the excitement around AI at the moment I think the answer is: a lot. Then my second question is how much VC money did all those tokens cost .
Can you imagine how many bags of chips we could buy if we stopped funding cancer research? It's so expensive!
Can you imagine how much ChatGPT cancer research we could fund if we stopped funding cancer research?
Re: Amateur armed with ChatGPT solves an Erdős problem
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wait, what do you mean "LLMs are still absolutely useless at actual maths computation"? I rely on them constantly for maths (linear algebra, multivariable calc, stat) --- literally thousands of problems run through GPT5 over the last 12 months, and to my recollection zero failures. But maybe you're thinking of something more specific?
They are bad at math. But they are good at writing code and as an optimization some providers have it secretly write code to answer the problem, run it and give you the answer without telling you what it did in the middle part.
Are they bad at math? Or are they bad at arithmetic?
Re: Amateur armed with ChatGPT solves an Erdős problem
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, it's one thing if the AI age means we all have to adopt to using AI as a tool, another thing entirely if it means the only people who can do useful research are the ones with huge budgets.
Your logic undoes your point, because the kid who "solved" this technically didn't even have to invest in a degree.
America should fund tertiary education better, and that would solve even more problems.