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Posted by js73js8 23 hours ago

Advisory Group on Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence(openai.com)
75 points | 65 comments
kingstnap 22 hours ago|
There are three big things in this announcement it seems.

> In addition to resolving the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize problem , this model has now resolved more than 100 long-standing open problems across most areas of mathematics.

Rumor was they were sitting on the solution to the Hodge conjecture. I wonder if thats one of these.

> The group will advise on the review and communication of emerging results.

With hundreds of results, and the seeming exponential vertical from earlier in summer (10 major results from Astra, now hundreds...) I do wonder how exactly such a group decides to disseminate results. If it will instantly bottleneck. I mean I checked their site and it seems to be a google form asking for opinions.

> Importantly, the group will not be responsible for advising us on how to pace our internal progress on mathematics.

Spicy. I think the super intelligence benchmark for me is P vs NP. That one I know is proper hard and feel it in my bones.

In related notes I watched a panel of mathematicians discuss AI recently on YouTubes. Specifically the hlf26 one. [0]. I also watched Terrence Taos recent one on SAIR [1]. In addition to a few others like Tom Rocks and Martin Hairer [2]. Whats abundantly clear is that no one has any answers to what this means for the future of mathematics. They all waffle about what anyone is going to be doing in a few years.

[0] https://youtu.be/H7_d_sgui6o

[1] https://youtu.be/PZRb6NIki2w

[2] https://youtu.be/G8HMa_tgM34

HarHarVeryFunny 21 hours ago||
> Rumor was they were sitting on the solution to the Hodge conjecture

I think someone at OpenAI (Brockman?) claimed they had "made substantial progress on it", but there is a mathematician on Twitter offering a $25,000 bet, with no takers, that they have not solved it, and that the "substantial progress" they have probably made would still leave them a lot further from a solution than they imagine.

I also see someone else on Twitter claiming to have used AI to understand what the Hodge conjecture is. :)

I really wish OpenAI would fire their PR department (incl. mathematicians), and concentrate on trying to build AGI, or RSI, or generate tons of money, or whatever they are trying to do.

Edit: Apparently not Brockman - some unknown leaker saying there was progress or an expected result soon

dumberquestions 19 hours ago|||
PR is important for getting investor money, which is important for building infrastructure and AGI, I don't think they're spending millions on pure math for fun.
HarHarVeryFunny 2 hours ago||
It's obviously for PR, but has rather backfired.

OpenAI don't seem to have much direction. First they seemed to be concentrating on consumer with ChatGPT, while also pursuing things like image and video generation, about to get into porn (sex-chat), then they suddenly woke up to Anthropic owning the much more lucrative business/API and coding markets and dropped those distractions to compete with Anthropic instead. The whole Navier-Stokes PR debacle was also due to focusing on Anthropic (who they had heard rumor had solved it), maybe also in part jealous of DeepMind's positive AI-for-science press.

So, is this (poorly conceived) PR a rational attempt to boost investment, or more of a case of paying too much attention to the competition?

dist-epoch 20 hours ago|||
> there is a mathematician on Twitter offering a $25,000 bet, with no taker

OpenAI spent $15 mil working on Navier Stokes.

So you're saying OpenAI not taking a $25k bet is proof of something?

HarHarVeryFunny 20 hours ago|||
I wouldn't expect the person who paid the $15M bill to be the one to take the bet, but the "expect to solve/announce it soon" rumor apparently came from some OpenAI employee, so the ship seems to be leaking, and yet nothing more.

I can see Altman sitting on 100 less famous math results waiting for the best PR opportunity to release them, but hard to see him sitting on this, risking being scooped by a competitor.

dist-epoch 10 hours ago||
There is no risk of being scooped. There are multiple ways of preregistering this, from timed crypto hashes, to showing the proofs to influential mathematicians before releasing them.
HarHarVeryFunny 5 hours ago||
In the world of PR it's about appearances - who grabs the headlines.

It this had happened and been shared with mathematicians, there would be leaks.

optimalsolver 21 hours ago||
It's funny coz this was what humans were supposed to be doing in techno-utopia, while AI does all the boring stuff. I don't think many predicted art and theoretical math would be first to fall to the machines.

The next few years are gonna be very rough for the human exceptionalism crowd.

kenjackson 21 hours ago||
In fairness this is the boring stuff for a lot of people. :-)
Certhas 21 hours ago||
Mathematics has enough cultural capital within the AI companies that they get to have this "advisory board".

Nobody else is getting that. When/If the severe impacts on labor materialize, workers won't get an advisory board. They will just get fired, and the companies will celebrate it as efficiency wins.

I think it's time to get very very real about regulation/taxation. Token/Compute sales tax that gets redistributed as UBI?

scurnus 20 hours ago||
Mathematics is just one of the first fields where models are better than humans and it is inconfutable.

Workers will get many boards for sure, you are underestimating unions and protests, it just won't be accepted that there isn't any job for people. The change will be diluted, to try to make economy absorb it.

pfdietz 20 hours ago||
> inconfutable

What a seriously cool archaic word.

Firaxus 20 hours ago||
Unfortunately the general population are going to have to hurt more before they begin being open to those options, assuming they don’t try to kill ai in general.
mwkaufma 21 hours ago||
"Advisory Group"

   Importantly, the group will not be responsible for advising us on how to pace our internal progress on mathematics.
pixl97 20 hours ago||
Again, internal and external are two different things.

They can solve whatever problems they like, and they can use those findings internally however they like. I think the advice is on how to disclose the findings to the public without as much uproar as our previous debacle.

HarHarVeryFunny 20 hours ago|||
I guess the OpenAI board was an advisory group too.

  Importantly, our board will not be responsible for advising us on anything.
classified 19 hours ago||
What can you expect when the wolf is the shepherd?
anothermathbozo 21 hours ago||
> internal progress on mathematics

This alone feels like a horrible new paradigm

6gvONxR4sf7o 17 hours ago||
> The group will operate independently from OpenAI. The group will have the freedom to offer advice we have not requested, comment on OpenAI’s impact on mathematics, and make its advice public.

That seems so empty. I also operate independently from them and have the freedom to tell them things they haven't requested and comment on their impact and do so publicly. But I doesn't have any impact on OpenAI. If they're trying to say how this will actually have any impact on anything at all, they're doing a shit job.

1242asZ 22 hours ago||
Like in Yes Minister, when they from a committee for a "full investigation". Gowers is on it, of course.
robotpepi 21 hours ago||
It feels like publicity stunt. Of they really care about research, they would at least have given more reasonable citations in the Navier-Stokes paper.
fireflysentinel 15 hours ago||
I asked Fable to predict which famous open problems are not in the 100+ list. It says Goldbach, Collatz, and abc, because those would warrant their own news posts.
blurbleblurble 21 hours ago|
You'd think they'd be able to read the room with all that artificial intelligence. This is just horrible PR. What use is the product if you're just cannibalizing your prospective market?
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