A misalignment of AI in mathematics • Hacker News Board

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#881

Post by eru » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 7:46 AM UTC

thayne wrote: post #842

eru wrote: post #818

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, what you are saying that the situation is even better for math than for chess? Chess is only valuable as an entertainment. So no one really gains anything from computers becoming really good at chess. But with math, everyone in the world would gain from computers becoming really, really good at it.

But solving math problems is not the same as increasing understanding of math concepts.

Applications don't care whether the math was proven and understood by humans or computers. Your algorithm will get faster no matter where the insight came from.

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#882

Post by ozgung » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 7:46 AM UTC

thayne wrote: post #842

eru wrote: post #818

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, what you are saying that the situation is even better for math than for chess? Chess is only valuable as an entertainment. So no one really gains anything from computers becoming really good at chess. But with math, everyone in the world would gain from computers becoming really, really good at it.

But solving math problems is not the same as increasing understanding of math concepts.

And this is exactly the point of the Statement. The process is more important than the solution itself. Most problems in mathematics don’t have immediate value or applications to the real world.

AI’s solutions are like the answers section to practice problems at the back of a textbook. Answer is 42, so what?You have to attempt the problem yourself, that’s the whole point of the exercise.

As an engineer I’m happy to use AI for math. If I publish a paper that way, very common these days, I think it’s still problematic. My paper would include something I didn’t come up with and I don’t really understand.

I think this is a good time to properly discuss these things because AI is coming for everything. Mathematics and Software were just the first two.

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#883

Post by eru » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 7:47 AM UTC

JoshTriplett wrote: post #829

eru wrote: post #819

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say it like it's a bad thing.

Replacing people leaves no room for people.

Even aggregate employment of translators has held up well in the US. Even though machines do a much better job of what used to be the most basic job of a translator.

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#884

Post by eru » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 7:48 AM UTC

ozgung wrote: post #882

thayne wrote: post #842

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But solving math problems is not the same as increasing understanding of math concepts.

And this is exactly the point of the Statement. The process is more important than the solution itself. Most problems in mathematics don’t have immediate value or applications to the real world. AI’s solutions are like the answers section to practice problems at the back of a textbook. Answer is 42, so what?You have to attempt the problem yourself, that’s the whole point of the exercise. As an engineer I’m happy to u…

Then instead of publishing a paper, just upload your AI result to github. Same advancement of the state of the art. Papers are overrated here.

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#885

Post by avadodin » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 8:00 AM UTC

immmmmm wrote: post #699

redox99 wrote: post #683

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many graduate students (I know) are having a crisis if any of their research worth it? If AI can (or will) do everything, what's the point of doing experiments and all? This will eventually deter a whole generation of curious minded students from research. Those who think it's me or the machine will fail. Those who realize how much you can accelerate your research with the help of AI will succeed.

Those who have token money will succeed. It biases maths and theoretical physics towards the rich. That one thing that was free.

That population is already heavily skewed towards the rich and people who get money thrown at them no questions asked.

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#886

Post by well_ackshually » Sat, Sep 12, 2026, 8:06 AM UTC

charcircuit wrote: post #524

well_ackshually wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it wasted everyone's time, thousands of hours of research trying to disprove something said very loudly. What OpenAI is doing is a DoS of the scientific community: wasting your time trying to check if they're not wrong, and claiming glory in the mean time.

OpenAI avoids this by formally verifying the proof. https://github.com/openai/NavierStokesAndEuler

It doesn't. It's 32 millions lines of bullshit, and the only thing it brought is "it's not true in some extreme conditions lol". The effort needed to figure out why that is, what conditions lead to it, the new mathematics that would need to be developed to solve their problem is once again being hoisted on actual humans, who now need to waste their time sifting through their slop.