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A misalignment of AI in mathematics

mathandai.org

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Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#981

Post by bonoboTP »

lying4fun wrote: post #954
mdnahas wrote: post #877

As a consumer of mathematics, I want to attack the author’s idea of “what that work was meant to achieve in the first place”. I do a lot of programming that uses mathematics. I designed the error recovery file format “par2”. I worked as a quantitative trader. What do I want from math? To be able to search math results, understand them, and apply them. But academic mathematicians are so inwardly focused - as these aut…

different fields have different communication cultures, that’s not inherently bad. sacrificing inward focus is expensive from the pov of the insider; i see your points but not everything can be written for a general/wide audience. after all, the audience of the author are the specialists, since only specialists spent the effort to be able to engage with the work in depth. perhaps we disagree that mathematics is not a…

> what the work was meant to achieve in the first place is what the work was achieving in the first place. it was developing mathematics.

Meant by who? Were the people footing the bill aware of this? People can like and do a lot of things. When money enters the picture it gets more complicated because usually the people who pay do that because they derive some gains from it. Historically scientists and mathematicians were employed by various patrons, sometimes doing astronomical calculations for horoscopes, Easter calendars and whatnot. Pure for-fun math was usually done by already wealthy individuals and not salaried employees like today. So it's fine that mathematicians feel this or that is their purpose, but they are coming to us asking for tax money, and so there is a bit of burden on them to be convincing. Before AI they used to argue how it helps physics, engineering technology, computer tech, optimizing logistics and telecom, cancer cures etc. Now the tune changed and it's retroactively now obviously just pure recreation and spiritual elegance. I also like math don't get me wrong. I think it's a great intellectual pursuit. But it's arrogant to expect that the money can flow by default.

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#983

Post by brap »

kaffekaka wrote: post #955
brap wrote: post #951

I know it's incredibly presumptuous for me, a nobody, to say this to 25 Fields Medalists, but: Perhaps you are misaligned. Who decided the goal of math must be human insight? First off, some mathematical truths might simply be far beyond our biological comprehension. Second, for us non-mathematicians, the value of math isn't in understanding exactly why a result is true, it’s in how those results can be applied to ac…

> Second, for us non-mathematicians, the value of math isn't in understanding exactly why a result is true, it’s in how those results can be applied to actually improve our lives. This is just the problem with the Navier-Stokes solution. We now (supposedly) know the truthiness of the statement, but we have no more understanding of why or how it applies to our quality of life. This is exactly the issue Tao is pointing…

Right, but this leads to my main question: is this still necessary?

By analogy with code, do we still need code to be maintainable/readable if machines write it all?

(Obviously for now the answer is yes, but I’m not sure this will be the case in 5-10 years)

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#984

Post by bonoboTP »

gwd wrote: post #241

This sounds a lot to me like people in the 90's complaining that computers were destroying chess. Thirty years later, chess is more popular than it ever was, and chess players are better than they ever have been. I wouldn't be surprised if there are now more chess books now than there ever have been. Furthermore, it turns out that a lot of chess books written before computers were just wrong about a lot of things. It…

> try to digest the 100-page Lean proof into something more manageable

AI will be better at digesting it into something more manageable.

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#986

Post by bonoboTP »

robotpepi wrote: post #873
omnicognate wrote: post #867

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even vaguely related to the point being made in the statement.

agree. so many people missing the point. I don't think they even bothered to read the letter.

I've read it. It's all a kind of navel gazing, all about internal academia dynamics. They should put much more effort into justifying why the public should still fund them. I'm not saying there can be no good reason, but they have to make the case and can't expect that the taxpayer also cares about intra-academic dynamics.

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#987

Post by bonoboTP »

falcor84 wrote: post #533
Strilanc wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's only one of mathematics' many purposes.

Exactly! What got me interested in memes as a kid is precisely the fact that mathematics is true in a way that is wholy independent of our understanding of it.

Well, most kids are certainly interested in memes, but you got a really unique reason there.

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#988

Post by bonoboTP »

sdeframond wrote: post #767
cute_boi wrote: post #697

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Once a robot can do everything an IQ 80 human can do, only better and cheaper, there will be no reason to employ IQ 80 humans. Once a robot can do everything an IQ 120 human can do, only better and cheaper, there will be no reason to employ IQ 120 humans. Once a robot can do everything an IQ 180 human can do, only better and cheaper, there will be no reason to employ humans at all, in the unlikely scenario that th…

Who is "we" ? Because if you dont need to employ a human, then who needs your services? If nobody needs anybody, what are we? (Edit: assuming you are human)

Depends on who controls the machines and what they do. If the machines just serve a select few and the masses are left to fend for themselves, they can just make a secondary pre-AI-like economy where they do small scale medieval-like economic activity for each other. Because if you're poor and can buy no AI services but still need some shoes, your other underclass neighbor may specialize and make some handmade shoes out of some plants or whatnot, for which you give him some seashells you got from another guy for cooking a pot of peas. However the machines may come in and intervene and stop this kind of shadow economy and force you to... I don't know. To just sit in your pod, or die. Because I guess they won't allow you to plow a field and stuff, because that land is now owned by AI or AI-owners too.

There are too many uncertainties around who will be in control and with what kinds of aims.

It would end in some kind of prison or zoo.

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#989

Post by [deleted] »

int_19h wrote: post #844
ekidd wrote: post #673

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. This is only true up until a point. If I treat a mid-sized model (say, Qwen3.8 Flash Next) like a pair programmer, then yes, it accelerates my work. But I can already see the next stage with Fable: If I give it a couple of paragraphs of spec and $50, then I can just leave…

> But I don't expect AI to accelerate humans or improve our productivity for long. I can already see the first signs of a future where the AI doesn't need us for anything at all. The real question is, why is this a bad thing? Every task that is automated is a task that humans no longer have to do. It doesn't mean that humans still can't do it for reasons other than "because it needs to be done". And if the answer is…

[deleted]

Re: A misalignment of AI in mathematics

#990

Post by bonoboTP »

kaffekaka wrote: post #950
erichocean wrote: post #942

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They want the AI labs to stop solving "important" math problems so that humans can do it, on the theory that when AI solves "important" math problems, it robs humans of the opportunity to gain new insights into those problems. Total horse shit, but that's the essence of it.

The issue is that now that Navier-Stokes is "solved", the amount of resources put into researching it will be reduced, meaning that the insights and knowledge that would have come out of even failed attempts will never be. An "unsolved problem" as a beacon to strive towards, gaining understanding along the way . With the beacon dead, noone will strive.

Funding agencies will have to adapt too, the community will have to adapt. Hiring committees will have to adapt. Everyone will have to adapt. They will have to rethink their criteria and adapt to reality. It's not at all guaranteed that this beacon interpretation will remain how people understand where to put resources. Yes, academia can be stiff, rigid, non-adaptive, set in its ways and navel gazing. But it's a wakeup call. Let's see.
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