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cjohnson318 | on: Three new discoveries in mathematics, computer science, and physics
The question for me is, would OpenAI have been able to solve this without Hong Wang's work?
anshumankmr | parent | next
The question for some is, is whether the original authors would have produced their work without building off from the work of other mathematicians.

(which is somewhat valid). Though I think a far more interesting thing would be whether AI given the corpus of 19th century mathematics and physics reproduce what Ramanujam or what Einstein did.

jazzyjackson | root | parent | next
:/

IMO that there is any work at all to build from is the result of a long tradition of taking the next step. Professor to student and so on. The danger of AI here is we get to take a leap, say, 10 steps - but then there is no more tradition to have the fortitude and mentoring necessary to continue the progress.

It all gets derailed while betting on RSI and never having to do math research again (but if an advanced theorem is proven, and no one alive is competent enough to comprehend it, does it even matter that we get to call it solved?)

soon_to_be_sb | root | parent | next
This is why the AI companies are making money off selling tokens and raking in investments for as long as it will work and is not looking to create the value themselves and making money off it...

They know that value creation is a dead end sooner or later..

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bemtevi | root | parent | next
I think the question is rather, what will happen to human beings when any possible personal intellectual accomplishment will no longer be seen as interesting or relevant by other human beings when AI can do most of it?

It's all well and good to say that we should just go on these journeys for our own enrichment, but even so they will just be doing it alone...or else not do it at all because they need a shared human effort surrounding them to do it, and therefore end up depressed and immersed in drugs or media all day.

Of course we're awed at what AI can do now, because all of us observing it have had the luxury of having such opportunities before AI. I got my PhD before AI and I found satisfaction in participating in a shared math community, which I wouldn't have done if I were starting my PhD now, because I would find the current academic environment unacceptable and useless.

xp84 | root | parent
Many people still do woodworking for the love of the craft, even though factories exist with machines that can do everything hand tools can but 10x better and faster. If AI gets way out in front of anything humans understand, I expect that mathematicians will probably pick up where their understanding actually is, and carry on.
krige | root | parent
That analogy is rather poor. Woodworking produces discrete, unique, and physical objects, that can be made, and found use for, as many times as the craftsman wishes. Once you discover a law of physics, you can't discover it again, and it's not yours to do with as you please.
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xp84 | root | parent | next
That would be a very exciting experiment. I doubt you could find enough vintage training data to train a LLM enough to do it without it being contaminated by anachronistic data in the weights, but I would be absolutely amazed if it could reproduce that.
joe_the_user | root | parent
whether the original authors would have produced their work without building off from the work of other mathematicians.

That's rhetorical, right? Of course mathematicians built on what older mathematicians built and OpenAI's machine built on that. The real question whether OpenAI's machine has contributed something others will in turn build on.

anshumankmr | root | parent
Not saying I agree with the view, but something along those lines popped up when the Naive Stokes conjecture was seemingly solved (and way before when Open AI began solving Olympiad level problems and so on with their older class of models). Personally, I do see both sides of the argument. Though the broader impact remains to be seen.
ubersketch | parent | next
The proof uses completely different methods as what harmonic analysts used for the Kakeya conjecture prior so probably yeah.
Valakas_ | parent | next
Would Hong Wang would have been able to do his work without previous physicists work? That's the real question!
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Nomennonhabeo | parent
Yes. The all-dimension result follows a completely different approach from that of Wang and Zahl.