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Epoch confirms GPT5.4 Pro solved a frontier math open problem
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Re: Epoch confirms GPT5.4 Pro solved a frontier math open problem
#722Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't want to do the thing where we fight on the internet. I don't know your background, but I'll push back here just because this type of comment that non-philosophers seem to present to me, which misses a lot of the points I'm trying to make. (1) "intuitive knowledge" - whether or not you want to take "intuitive knowledge" as a type of knowledge (I don't think I would) is basically immaterial. The deductive-induc…
Your response is... interesting. I thought I agreed with most of your original comment that I replied to, and here you are ready to fight. I'm not even sure what you're fighting, and I certainly didn't have in mind the things you responded to. Well, I guess I learned not to talk to philosophers (especially those who went through school) the hard way. Sometimes I forget my lesson and it's always sad when this happens.…
I do not think I handled the response as well as I would have liked to. I'm sorry if you felt poorly treated. That was not my intention.
Re: Epoch confirms GPT5.4 Pro solved a frontier math open problem
#723I 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…
> You need to say why it can do some novel tasks but could never do others.
This is actually quite a tall order. Reasoning about AI and making sense of what the LLMs are doing, and learning to think about it as technology, is a very difficult and very tricky problem.
You get into all kinds of weird things about a person’s outlook on life: personal philosophy, understanding of ontology and cosmology, and then whatever other headcanon they happen to be carrying around about how they think life works.
I know that might sound kind of poetic, but I really believe it’s true.
I am a great fan of Dr Richard Hamming and he gave a wonderful series of lectures on the topic. The book Learning to Learn has the full set of his lectures transcribed (highly recommend this book!).
But don't take my word for it, listen to Dr Hamming say it himself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aq_PLEQ9YzI
"The biggest problem is your ego. The second biggest problem is your religion."
Re: Epoch confirms GPT5.4 Pro solved a frontier math open problem
#724I 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…
The hardest part about any creativity is hiding your influences
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Re: Epoch confirms GPT5.4 Pro solved a frontier math open problem
#725Earlier quoted context omitted.
I might as well answer my own question, because I do think there are some coherent arguments for fundamental LLM limitations: 1. LLMs are trained on human-quality data, so they will naturally learn to mimic our limitations. Their capabilities should saturate at human or maybe above-average human performance. 2. LLMs do not learn from experience. They might perform as well as most humans on certain tasks, but a human…
I studied philosophy focusing on the analytic school and proto-computer science. LLMs are going to force many people start getting a better understanding about what "Knowledge" and "Truth" are, especially the distinction between deductive and inductive knowledge. Math is a perfect field for machine learning to thrive because theoretically, all the information ever needed is tied up in the axioms. In the empirical wor…
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Re: Epoch confirms GPT5.4 Pro solved a frontier math open problem
#726Earlier quoted context omitted.
I studied philosophy focusing on the analytic school and proto-computer science. LLMs are going to force many people start getting a better understanding about what "Knowledge" and "Truth" are, especially the distinction between deductive and inductive knowledge. Math is a perfect field for machine learning to thrive because theoretically, all the information ever needed is tied up in the axioms. In the empirical wor…
Also, we can do thought experiments, simulations in our heads, that often are as good as doing them for real - it has limitations and isn't perfect though. But it does work often. Einstein used to purposely dose off in a weird position so that something hit his leg or something like that to slightly nudge him half awake so he could remember his half-dreaming state - which is where he discovered some things
Any source on Einstein's behavior? Id love to read more.
Re: Epoch confirms GPT5.4 Pro solved a frontier math open problem
#727Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Plenty of humans can't do arithmetic. Can they also not reason. I just pointed out that this isn't valid reasoning ... it's a fallacy of denial of the antecedent. No one is arguing that because LLMs can't do arithmetic, therefore they can't reason. After all, zamalek said that he can't quickly multiply large numbers in his head, but he isn't saying that therefore he can't reason. > Reasoning isn't a binary switch.…
Indeed, and a lot of humans are very bad at it, as is clear from the comments I'm responding to. This is your idea of "conversing curiously" and "editing out swipes," I suppose. I've had this argument too many times ... it never goes anywhere. So I won't respond again ... over and out. A real reasoning entity might pause for self-examination here. Maybe run its chain of thought for a few more iterations, or spend som…
> Don't be snarky.
Re: Epoch confirms GPT5.4 Pro solved a frontier math open problem
#728Earlier quoted context omitted.
LLMs don't use tools. Systems that contain LLMs are programmed to use tools under certain circumstances.
you’re just abstracting it away into this new “systems” definition when someone says LLMs today they obviously mean software that does more than just text, if you want to be extra pedantic you can even say LLMs by themselves can’t even geenrate text since they are just model files if you don’t add them to a “system” that makes use of that model files, doh
> when someone says LLMs today they obviously mean ...
LLMs, if the someone is me or others who understand why it's important to be precise. And in this context, the distinction between LLM and AI mattered--not pedantic at all.
I won't respond further ... over and out.
Re: Epoch confirms GPT5.4 Pro solved a frontier math open problem
#729Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is ScreenCaptureKit a bad choice for performance?
Because you can't control what the content server is doing. SCK doesn't care if you only need a small section of a window: it performs multiple full window memory copies that aren't a problem for normal screen recorders... but for a utility like mine, the user needs to see the updated content in milliseconds. Also, as I mentioned above, when using SCK, the user cannot minimize or maximize any "watched" window, which…
It's been a while since I looked at this but I'm not entirely sure I agree with this. ScreenCaptureKit vends IOSurfaces which don't have copies besides the one that happens to fill the buffer during rendering. I'm not entirely sure what other options you have that are better besides maybe portal views.
Re: Epoch confirms GPT5.4 Pro solved a frontier math open problem
#730Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because you can't control what the content server is doing. SCK doesn't care if you only need a small section of a window: it performs multiple full window memory copies that aren't a problem for normal screen recorders... but for a utility like mine, the user needs to see the updated content in milliseconds. Also, as I mentioned above, when using SCK, the user cannot minimize or maximize any "watched" window, which…
It's been a while since I looked at this but I'm not entirely sure I agree with this. ScreenCaptureKit vends IOSurfaces which don't have copies besides the one that happens to fill the buffer during rendering. I'm not entirely sure what other options you have that are better besides maybe portal views.
> but I'm not entirely sure I agree with this
I worked on the AVC team and built the original SCK Instruments plugin for performance monitoring. I'm assuming you aren't talking about ring-0 (which is where the performance hit occurs). That said, if you want your users to be able to minimize/maximize any "watched" window, ScreenCaptureKit is a non-starter. The OBS team has been asking Apple to remove that restriction for years.
Here's a more real-world scenario [0] where Seymour has to handle more than a single window. I can cycle through the entire z-order at 60 fps while capturing all of the content windows. In fact, Seymore can display the contents of minimized windows, which the content server doesn't even support natively. BTW, this quick demo was done using a debug build. The release build can run at Here's something else you can't do with SCK: picture-in-picture windows [1] that can exist even when the source window is hidden. This is super helpful when watching builds or app logs on larger monitors. No more command+tabbing to babysit things.