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Davidzheng | on: Making Wolfram tech available as a foundation tool for LLM systems
There's a lot of value in the implementation of many strong and fast algeorithms in computer algebra in proprietary tools such as Maple, Wolfram, Matlab. However, I (though of course believe that such work needs to be compensated) find it against the spirit of science to keep them from the general public. I think it would be good service to use AI tools to bring open source alternatives like sympy and sage and macaulay to par. There's really A LOT of cool algorithms missing (most familiar to me are some in computational algebraic geometry)

Additionally I think because of how esoteric some algorithms are, they are not always implemented in the most efficient way for today's computers. It would be really nice to have better software written by strong software engineers who also understands the maths for mathematicians. I hope to see an application of AI here to bring more SoTA tools to mathematicians--I think it is much more value than formalization brings to be completely honest.

laserbeam | parent | next
> against the spirit of science to keep them from the general public

Within science, participants have always published descriptions of methodology and results for review and replication. Within the same science, participants have never made access to laboratories free for everyone. You get blueprints for how to build a lab and what to do in it, you don't get the building.

Same for computation. I'm fairly sure almost all (if not all) algorithms in these suites are documented somewhere and you can implement them if you want. No one is restricting you from the knowledge. You just don't get the implementation for free.

notyourwork | root | parent | next
Generally I agree up until now where we appear to be treading on the threshold of AI being orders of magnitude more powerful. Given that, which has potential to displace large swaths of the labor force, I feel as though society deserves a larger return on investment.
squeefers | root | parent | next
> Same for computation....You just don't get the implementation for free.

software packages are computation... whilst software takes time and effort (and money) to make, the finished product is virtually free to store and distribute. i see it similarly against the spirit of science. how is there more free software in the laymen space?

Almondsetat | root | parent | next
Software is fundamentally different than lab equipment, just like PDFs are not paper journals that have to be printed, stored, and shipped. Most things in the digital domain have to be treated in a post-scarcity mindset, because they essentially are.
cwillu | root | parent | next
Software is the blueprint, execution is the machine.
whywhywhywhy | root | parent
This is why the incoming generation of AI engineers organizing autonomously and openly on git etc will decimate the dusty locked away AI academia generation.

The concept of heavy gatekeeping and attribution chasing seems asinine as knowledge generation and sharing isn't metered.

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