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GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics

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Re: GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's called ethics and research integrity. not crediting GPT would be a form of misrepresentation

Would it? I think there's a difference between "the researchers used ChatGPT" and "one of the researchers literally is ChatGPT." The former is the truth, and the latter is the misrepresentation in my eyes. I have no problem with the former and agree that authors/researchers must note when they use AI in their research.

now you are debating exactly how GPT should be credited. idk, I'm sure the field will make up some guidance

for this particular paper it seems the humans were stuck, and only AI thinking unblocked them

Re: GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics

#92
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a big LLM sceptic but that's… moving the goalposts a little too far. How could an average Joe even understand the conjecture enough to write the initial prompt? Or do you mean that experts would give him the prompt to copy-paste, and hope that the proverbial monkey can come up with a Henry V? At the very least posit someone like a grad student in particle physics as the human user.

hey, GPT, solve this tough conjecture I've read about on Quanta. make no mistakes

[dead]

Re: GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics

#93

It's interesting to me that whenever a new breakthrough in AI use comes up, there's always a flood of people who come in to handwave away why this isn't actually a win for LLMs. Like with the novel solutions GPT 5.2 has been able to find for erdos problems - many users here (even in this very thread!) think they know more about this than Fields medalist Terence Tao, who maintains this list showing that, yes, LLMs hav…

It's an obvious tension created by the title. The reality is: "GPT 5.2 found a more general and scalable form of an equation, after crunching for 12 hours supervised by 4 experts in the field". Which is equivalent to taking some of the countless niche algorithms out there and have few experts in that algo have LLMs crunch tirelessly till they find a better formula. After same experts prompted it in the right directio…

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Re: GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics

#94
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the critical bit (paraphrasing): Humans have worked out the amplitudes for integer n up to n = 6 by hand, obtaining very complicated expressions, which correspond to a “Feynman diagram expansion” whose complexity grows superexponentially in n. But no one has been able to greatly reduce the complexity of these expressions, providing much simpler forms. And from these base cases, no one was then able to spot a…

You should probably email the authors if you think that's true. I highly doubt they didn't do a literature search first though...

You should be more skeptical of marketing releases like this. This is an advertisement.

Re: GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics

#95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know enought about theoretical physics: what makes it a significant contribution there?

It's a nontrivial calculation valid for a class of forces (e.g. QCD) and apparently a serious simplification to a specific calculation that hadn't been completed before. But for what it's worth, I spent a good part of my physics career working in nucleon structure and have not run across the term "single minus amplitudes" in my memory. That doesn't necessarily mean much as there's a very broad space work like this ta…

Thank you!

Re: GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How much precedence is there for machines or tools getting an author credit in research? Well what do you think ? Do the authors (or a single symbolic one) of pytorch or numpy or insert typically get credits on papers that utilize them heavily? Well Clearly these prominent institutions thought GPT's contribution significant enough to warrant an Open AI credit. >Would we give an author credit to e.g. a chimpanzee if…

> Well what do you think ? Do the authors (or a single symbolic one) of pytorch or numpy or insert typically get credits on papers that utilize them heavily ? I don't know! That's why I asked. > Well Clearly these prominent institutions thought GPT's contribution significant enough to warrant an Open AI credit. Contribution is a fitting word, I think, and well chosen. I'm sure OpenAI's contribution was quite large, q…

>I don't know! That's why I asked.

If you don't read enough papers to immediately realize it is an extremely rare occurrence then what are you even doing? Why are you making comments like you have the slightest clue of what you're talking about? including insinuating the credit was what...the result of bribery?

You clearly have no idea what you're talking about. You've decided to accuse prominent researchers of essentially academic fraud with no proof because you got butthurt about a credit. You think your opinion on what should and shouldn't get credited matters ? Okay

I've wasted enough time talking to you. Good Day.

Re: GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they probably also acknowledge pytorch, numpy, R ... but we don't attribute those tools as the agent who did the work. I know we've been primed by sci-fi movies and comic books, but like pytorch, gpt-5.2 is just a piece of software running on a computer instrumented by humans.

And we are just a system running on carbon-based biology in our physics computer run by whomever. What makes us special, to say that we are different than GPT-5.2?

It's always a value decision. You can say shiny rocks are more important than people and worth murdering over.

Not an uncommon belief.

Here you are saying you personally value a computer program more than people

It exposes a value that you personally hold and that's it

That is separate from the material reality that all this AI stuff is ultimately just computer software... It's an epistemological tautology in the same way that say, a plane, car and refrigerator are all just machines - they can break, need maintenance, take expertise, can be dangerous...

LLMs haven't broken the categorical constraints - you've just been primed to think such a thing is supposed to be different through movies and entertainment.

I hate to tell you but most movie AIs are just allegories for institutional power. They're narrative devices about how callous and indifferent power structures are to our underlying shared humanity

Re: GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics

#98

It's interesting to me that whenever a new breakthrough in AI use comes up, there's always a flood of people who come in to handwave away why this isn't actually a win for LLMs. Like with the novel solutions GPT 5.2 has been able to find for erdos problems - many users here (even in this very thread!) think they know more about this than Fields medalist Terence Tao, who maintains this list showing that, yes, LLMs hav…

Let’s have some compassion, a lot of people are freaking out about their careers now and defense mechanisms are kicking in. It’s hard for a lot of people to say “actually yeah this thing can do most of my work now, and barrier of entry dropped to the ground”.

Re: GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but I haven’t been to get them to do something totally out of distribution yet from first principles Can humans actually do that? Sometimes it appears as if we have made a completely new discovery. However, if you look more closely, you will find that many events and developments led up to this breakthrough, and that it is actually an improvement on something that already existed. We are always building on the shou…

Relativity comes to mind. You could nitpick a rebuttal, but no matter how many people you give credit, general relativity was a completely novel idea when it was proposed. I'd argue for special relatively as well.

That's not exactly true. Lorentz contraction is a clear antecedent to special relativity.

Re: GPT-5.2 derives a new result in theoretical physics

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their point is, would you be able to prompt your way to this result? No. Already trained physicists working at world-leading institutions could. So what progress have we really made here?

It's a stupid point then. Are you able to work with a world leading physicist to any significant degree? No

It's like saying: calculator drives new result in theoretical physics

(In the hands of leading experts.)

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