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Posted by _alternator_ 14 hours ago

Tao: Open math problems being non-renewably mined by AI(mathstodon.xyz)
378 points | 337 commentspage 4
xelxebar 11 hours ago|
There is also a large incentive for OpenAI to fold user conversations into the training process. Proving this happened is unduly hard, and given that professionals are using frontier LLMs for daily work, such training would make it easier for labs to scoop said professionals.

I have seen private correspondence between one mathematician working on Navier-Stokes and OpenAI that makes it sound like OpenAI deliberately scooped this Navier-Stokes result. The alleged correspondence also contained veiled threats if said mathematician went public.

qarl 11 hours ago||
AIs are putting humans out of work.

Yes. We already knew this. Are we actually surprised it's happening?

I guess we are.

arjie 12 hours ago||
Well, we name conjectures after the conjecturer not the (dis)prover so there is some incentive to be the guy who comes up with a hard problems. It is curious that we haven’t had something like this improve OR etc. problems. Perhaps not glorious enough.
p-e-w 12 hours ago|
> Well, we name conjectures after the conjecturer not the (dis)prover

That’s not universally true. Some conjectures are renamed after being proven. For example, Fermat’s Last Theorem is now sometimes called the Fermat-Wiles Theorem, the Taniyama-Shimura Conjecture is often referred to as the Modularity Theorem now, etc.

program_whiz 12 hours ago||
Timing is everything https://nonlineartransform.substack.com/p/ai-swarms-timing-i...

Article arguing math is the next "human calculator".

turtleyacht 14 hours ago||
If proofs are tropes, explanations are stories. There won't be an end to stories.
vouaobrasil 12 hours ago|
Actually there will because if you've actually ever spent time doing math, you only really get to that level of truly understanding and appreciating the stories if you've actually done the hard work yourself, which in turn will be economically infeasible due to AI. The analogy is interesting but incomplete and misleading.
gpm 12 hours ago|||
I've actually spent time doing math and literally everyone I know who knows math learnt it by reproving things that people proved before them. I don't see why AI proving things makes this form of learning any more economically infeasible than the field of mathematics already is - and since it was apparently economically feasible before AI I expect it to stay that way.
abdullahkhalids 9 hours ago||
There are two stages to learning research level math. First you learn to reprove other people work. This is relatively easy because the language, notion and prior explanations have already been optimized to help prove the next thing, and you know a solution exists. Then in your PhD you try to solve problems you don't really know a solution exists, and if it does, how long and complicated it is, what techniques will be used, etc.

You need to solve the second to get a PhD. For good reason. The second is way harder than the first. And now AI is making second way obsolete. It's not the end of the world, but it is the end of how things have been done for centuries.

CamperBob2 12 hours ago|||
you only really get to that level of truly understanding and appreciating the stories if you've actually done the hard work yourself, which in turn will be economically infeasible due to AI

The thing is, nobody has time for that. Look at Mochizuki's work. It takes years of hard labor by high-level mathematicians to come up with stuff like that, and years of hard labor on the part of other mathematicians to validate it. The low-hanging fruit in math has all been picked, AI or no AI, and Tao doesn't seem to acknowledge that.

The mathematics community needs better tools or they're out of business anyway. Now they're getting those tools... and bickering and complaining about it?

vouaobrasil 12 hours ago||
I agree that the low-hanging fruit has largely been picked. But then I think we should acknowledge that and stop innovating, or just work less on new solutions and more on clarifying old ones, and start to work on degrowth rather than useless problem solving. Because I really don't feel that any of this is really necessary or beneficial for the human race in the long-term.
soundworlds 11 hours ago||
I think this is where people will have to let go of the ego of being the "sole author" of a solution for us to move into the next era of human flourishing.
samwise99 11 hours ago|
The future sole owners of half of San Francisco’s mansions thank you for your enlightened stance.
soundworlds 10 hours ago||
The future I'm after involves Open models controlled by the people, not a few SC venture capitalists
sxzygz 9 hours ago||
Oh man am I totally going to determine the 10^10^10th digit of π and cement my name in the annals of history.
bibimsz 6 hours ago|
it's 7
LunicLynx 11 hours ago||
Why not let AI proof or disproof this Tao - PI - Riemann zeta hypothesis
esafak 12 hours ago||
It's the same pipeline problem coders have been talking about; once AI does all the work, how are people going to get the experience necessary to take part productively?
gpm 12 hours ago|
See also his previous thread from before the result was published (and before he knew it was coming [1]) on how a to this problem seemed increasingly likely to be solved by AI in a way that caused us to miss the insights that would traditionally be associated with solving it: https://mathstodon.xyz/@tao/117207849921390904

[1] https://mathstodon.xyz/@tao/117219101339291693

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