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Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

openai.com

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Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#711

Post by oblio »

dash2 wrote: post #701
voxl wrote: post #617

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not the argument. It's not a comparison to gambling but a comparison to something that does not materially improve a person's life. Economic expenditure does not equate to human benefit. This is the original argument, and the onus is on THAT person to explain why people spending for AI actually benefit, not the other way around. Perhaps you can ask Claude to explain it to you.

I think it’s widely accepted that most things are bought because they satisfy people’s needs or wants. Sure, there are exceptions, like drugs or gambling. Is there any reason to think AI is one of them?

Drugs, gambling, alcohol, tobacco, vaping, ultra processed foods, social media, luxury goods/conspicuous consumption, etc.

A lot of humans are incredibly bad at allocating money.

Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#712

Post by class3shock »

namr2000 wrote: post #659
pbkompasz wrote: post #633

Wow, here are solutions to 10 problems that we spent millions of dollars on out of the 100s/1000s of other problems that we tried and failed to solve.

I understand the frustration with the constant PR-hype these AI labs keep spewing out, but on other hand I just can't understand this sentiment at all. These are real problems mathematicians and computer scientists have been working on and were unable to make progress on. Now they have been given a new tool and using that tool have solved those problems. And its not just one or two problems, its many very difficult p…

"I understand the frustration with the constant PR-hype these AI labs keep spewing out"

Apparently you don't.

"These are real problems mathematicians and computer scientists have been working on and were unable to make progress on."

Who says no one was making progress? Who says openai has made progress? How would anyone not working on these specific problems, witho the time to dig into openai's claims, be able to tell? Why should this not be lumped in with all the other ai hype being pushed?

"The mathematicians I know are saying that the latest crop of models is changing the way people do research math, I think that's a pretty big deal."

Who? And doing what?

We have been hearing the "this generation of models is the one" type talk for years and the only concrete "big deals" are what? A tool for college students to write papers? A replacement for, now enshitified, google search? The fact that now you can fake tons of stuff to support a position or claim tons of stuff that goes against your position is fake?

Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#713

Post by scarmig »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #634
sothatsit wrote: post #535

People argue whether we are at y-5, y, or y+5, meanwhile we seem to be on a y=2^x exponential that keeps delivering more and more impressive results. The most interesting question to me is what will be consumed by the exponential like math seems to be undergoing, and what won’t. Writing has been quite stubborn, but I’ve noticed Fable to be quite a big step up there. How about politics? Will we develop new ways to let…

Sigmoidal, not exponential. It would be insane to assume an exponential curve

Everything has limits, of course. But if you've not yet seen a deceleration, it's reasonable to expect that at the least you're in the middle of the sigmoid, not the top.

Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#714

Post by hackinthebochs »

watutalkinbout wrote: post #605
viccis wrote: post #567

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Will we develop new ways to let people express their own values in democracies, or will we just get much better at manipulation? Is there even the tiniest reason to suspect that the people steering this progress will use it for the democratic good of all?

It's like Musks duplicitous argument about unlimited abundance. We have a lot of abundance now, we just keep accelerating it all into the hands of fewer and fewer people - whose response is only to want more, and more, and more.

Yeah, we really should just storm the facility where Musk is hoarding all the worlds bread and meat.

Wealth in terms of capital doesn't represent material goods, it represents the system's confidence in your ability to direct capital efficiently. But eventually efficient capital bottoms out at consumable goods. Someone like Musk with a lot of capital under his control is contributing to the end goal of unlimited abundance.

Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#715

Post by class3shock »

dash2 wrote: post #467
amazingamazing wrote: post #137

Can’t wait for this stuff to have quality of life increases for the average person. So far all I see is that AI has made owning a computer more expensive, made some jobs redundant, increased spam and distrust with questionable authenticity of content and of course made some Americans very rich.

If it doesn't help average people, why do millions of them pay for it?

So if millions of people pay for something it must be helping average people but if 10s of millions of average people express concerns about a thing than what? I would assume since you were happy to go with the will of the people when it supported your argument, you would be in complete support of actually regulating ai and addressing the many concerns of society at large?

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/americans-fear-ai-permanent...

Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#716

Post by beering »

curt15 wrote: post #688
sothatsit wrote: post #535

People argue whether we are at y-5, y, or y+5, meanwhile we seem to be on a y=2^x exponential that keeps delivering more and more impressive results. The most interesting question to me is what will be consumed by the exponential like math seems to be undergoing, and what won’t. Writing has been quite stubborn, but I’ve noticed Fable to be quite a big step up there. How about politics? Will we develop new ways to let…

Another interesting question is why the frontier labs are piling on pure maths, which has little direct economic value compared to something like law or improving the efficiency of their own models? How much OpenAI and Anthropic are paying to serve these models for ordinary users is the elephant in the room. A cynical take is that the frontier labs are trying their best to pump up their pre-IPO valuation through flas…

If everyone publicly said that the models can only do things that humans have already done, but you know they can do more, wouldn’t you want to show them otherwise?

Math ability also helps with other things like making models more efficient.

Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#717

Post by class3shock »

evenhash wrote: post #431
amazingamazing wrote: post #137

Can’t wait for this stuff to have quality of life increases for the average person. So far all I see is that AI has made owning a computer more expensive, made some jobs redundant, increased spam and distrust with questionable authenticity of content and of course made some Americans very rich.

Not everyone works for Evil Corp. I work in the public sector and my work supports public health and safety initiatives. AI has allowed my team to get much more done than we would have otherwise which improves the quality of life of the people in my community. So I would like to counter your cynicism with a “YMMV” depending on who you work for.

I work in the public sector and my work supports public health and safety initiatives.

What does "support" mean in this context?

Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#718

Post by [deleted] »

plif wrote: post #698
tyre wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We will get much better at manipulation and better at people “writing” things to justify their own feelings. What’s new about LLMs is that you can scalably manipulate people individually. It used to be that you could either have scale (speeches, tweets, interviews, website, etc.) or individual engagement (replying to mail/tweets/town hall questions.) Now you can pull the history and preferences of an individual, then…

Not new about LLMs. Targeted ads / big data is this. Another degree of capability, yes. But we have been trending here for a long time.

[deleted]

Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#719

Post by [deleted] »

metanonsense wrote: post #699
5555watch wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the illustration that the models are working on a convex hull of known information. Filling gaps with linear combinations of known facts and results. They can't exit the hull until the "intuition" starts spawning points outside the convex hull.

I think this is only "statistically" true in the sense that training is based on facts and not non-facts (except maybe with the ingestion of flat-earthers literature ;-). The existence of hallucinations in a bare transformer shows that the convex hull is not about information but about text, so the limit may more be "possible linear combinations of text", which allows for much extrapolation and counterfactuals. True…

[deleted]

Re: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

#720

Post by hnlmorg »

plif wrote: post #698
tyre wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We will get much better at manipulation and better at people “writing” things to justify their own feelings. What’s new about LLMs is that you can scalably manipulate people individually. It used to be that you could either have scale (speeches, tweets, interviews, website, etc.) or individual engagement (replying to mail/tweets/town hall questions.) Now you can pull the history and preferences of an individual, then…

Not new about LLMs. Targeted ads / big data is this. Another degree of capability, yes. But we have been trending here for a long time.

It’s unfortunate that you’re being downvoted because this comment is true. And it just goes to show how far we’ve sunk that people have forgotten the problems of ad tech in the age of LLMs.
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