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A misalignment of AI in mathematics

mathandai.org

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Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#911

Post by tossandthrow »

pks016 wrote: post #665

I never expected this many people (on this thread) arguing semantics and what not. I know that not everyone has morality and ethics, but I didn't realize it was this bad. I'm afraid of the ripple effect of the agenda pushed by AI companies will have. In future and even now, they say AI has significantly progressed math and scientific research in general. There is truth to this, but the narrative has done more damage…

I don't understand why you introduce morality and ethics into your comment?

Pointing out that regressive Ai politics likely are not going to help researchers crisis of purpose is not unethical.

You also assume in your comment that we need new large generations of researchers, and that knowledge transfer through academic institutions is important.

I get the fear. But entertaining ideas of impact to institutions and potentially new post ai institutions is not unethical.

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#912

Post by black_knight »

socketcluster wrote: post #905

As a software engineer, 6 months ago. I was better than AI in essentially every way except raw typing speed. Now AI has surpassed me in fine-grained problem-solving ability. It can write more reliable code than I can, faster than I can, provided it is given the right guidance. But one thing that I'm still much better at is identifying technical opportunities and choosing the right tradeoffs. My feeling is that fronti…

This mirrors my understanding when I use Claude code for mathematics. I can have deep discussions with it and it can solve my hairy problems. But whenever we go off the beaten track into design new mathematics, it struggles to make conceptual leaps and find the right definitions. Once I give it my ideas, it is back to its super-human pace and top notch intelligence.

This situation suits me fine, since I am anyways more of an ideas person, than a crunching open problems person. But I understand the desperation of my colleagues who mad solving hard problems their identity.

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#913

Post by encyclopediai »

scottyah wrote: post #98
datakan wrote: post #65

Everyones outraged all the time. It doesn't mean anything anymore. It's that meme from years ago about the red ants and the black ants living in a box peacefully until someone shakes the box and they start trying to kill each other. They go after each other and not the one shaking the box. OpenAI/Anthropic are shaking the box.

I don't understand how that metaphor applies here, you seem to contradict yourself. The mathematicians are mad at openai. If the mathematicians are the black ants and OpenAI is shaking the box, who are the red ants?

The is no "the mathematicians". Some mathematicians, very influent ones, are mad at AI, for social reasons, because it shows problem solving is "easy".

Mathematics is fine and will be fine in the future.

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#914

Post by andrepd »

rester324 wrote: post #814
gpt5 wrote: post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that the main thing people in this thread are missing, is that it's not about math. AI progression is very likely to affect every single thing humans can do today. Mathematicians are feeling the blow this week, especially as there was wide spread denial in that math community over the capabilities of AI over the last few years, but it's the same problem everywhere.

Well, yeah, while that is true, my impression is that mathematicians (as a community, even though there were outliers) didn't care - not even the slightest - about the impact of LLMs and generative AI, other type of AI and machine learning until it started impacting them. So I have no sympathy for their community at all. They brought all this AI dystopia on us, so they should have voiced their concerns much louder an…

> mathematicians (as a community, even though there were outliers) didn't care - not even the slightest - about the impact of LLMs and generative AI, other type of AI and machine learning until it started impacting them. So I have no sympathy for their community at all. They brought all this AI dystopia on us

Wait wait wait. The research mathematicians brought this AI dystopia on us. Not the techbros, not Silicon Valley, not the global financial system and its tentacles, not surveillance capitalism... No, it was the postdocs working on ultrafilters for C(2,3) epimorphisms on symplectic manifolds. That's certainly a take.

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#915

Post by freehorse »

zozbot234 wrote: post #856
qlte wrote: post #775

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It includes Terrance Tao who has made the front page several dozen times at this point for his usage of AI such as to help the community write proofs for Erdos problems. But to many commentors he's a now gatekeeping AI-hating Luddite clinging to a dying profession out of bitterness and envy because his position is more nuanced than "throw AI at everything and turn off your brain".

Because his letter misuses the word "misalignment" for what's very clearly a capability gap. To anyone familiar with that sort of language, his prose is directly implying that evil superintelligent AIs are deliberately writing obscure proofs in order to harm the community of human mathematicians, which is exactly what the AI-hating Luddite would say! The reality is closer to "current frontier AIs are clueless about w…

> his prose is directly implying that evil superintelligent AIs are deliberately writing obscure proofs in order to harm the community of human mathematicians

That is probably the wildest misinterpretation of sth I have ever read here. Misalignment is used as in the goals and interests of ai COMPANIES are not the same as the ones of the mathematical community. It is very proper use of the word, and if anything imo the properest, as it refers to actual people and institutions to which actual self-ascribed goals can be defined, as in contrast to hypothetical superintelligence. AI doomers do not own some trademark on the word "alignment".

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#916

Post by BlackFingolfin »

SavageNoble wrote: post #726
breezybottom wrote: post #717

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could you possibly know if it has potential or not? Sounds like AI psychosis setting in.

Because every test I run with it is telling me so? The great thing about math is it can be externally validated.

Who makes the tests? Who runs the tests? And who evaluates that the tests have meaning? As long as it is the AI, or you (with your self-admitted limited experience), how can you be sure it is meaningful?

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#917

Post by freehorse »

eru wrote: post #881
thayne wrote: post #842

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Applications do not care about 99.999% of theoretical math production anyway. And especially most of the big results in theoretical math nowadays are really inconsequential in applications.

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#918

Post by Marha01 »

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.

> Replacing people leaves no room for people.

I am much more than my job. If I receive basic income, please replace my job ASAP!

And if I don't receive a basic income in a world where AI is capable of replacing all human jobs, then the problem is not AI, but the powers that be.

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#919

Post by Trusteando »

It could be that the capability of humans to find a short proof, in the human sense, allows them to construct a ladder for the next problems and proofs. But for the AI agents the proof of a theorem is like finding an island, perhaps no one can see what are the links with the current human knowledge to create new knowledge. The metaphor is a ladder that have only one big step that only a machine can walk while our minds are ladders with many little steps, we advance at a slow rate but we construct the ladder that our brains can walk. I think this is an essential idea.

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#920

Post by wanderingmind »

pks016 wrote: post #665

I never expected this many people (on this thread) arguing semantics and what not. I know that not everyone has morality and ethics, but I didn't realize it was this bad. I'm afraid of the ripple effect of the agenda pushed by AI companies will have. In future and even now, they say AI has significantly progressed math and scientific research in general. There is truth to this, but the narrative has done more damage…

Newsflash. Most graduate research is worth nothing. If this helps graduate students to re-evaluate and start doing things that can generate income while being intellectually stimulating, it's a net win for the person and the economy
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