“There’s a perception of mobster behavior” from leading AI companies, one mathematician tells WIRED as OpenAI prepares to release more than 100 new solutions to unsolved problems.
I think people really need to understand the “it just took a bunch of public work and connected the pieces” isn’t a gotcha for LLMs: it’s one of the sales pitches. The cross-discipline general knowledge combined with the ability to churn huge datasets to find connections across already-known work, and extrapolate to or derive novel findings, is exactly one mode of superhuman success that AI companies have been trying to achieve.
The bigger issue is that they may be camping human efforts then kill-stealing the last hit on the boss by burning millions of dollars to get a proof a few days/weeks/months earlier than when it would have happened without AI. Basically, waiting for problems to be all-but-formally solved, then beating the researchers to the punch; like the recent Millenium controversy
The cross-discipline general knowledge combined with the ability to churn huge datasets to find connections across already-known work, and extrapolate to or derive novel findings, is exactly one mode of superhuman success that AI companies have been trying to achieve.
Exactly.
Like in the quoted picture, there’s not a huge amount of people who have deep knowledge of Number Theory and the number of them who are also similarly versed in the math behind Quantum Physics could probably be counted on one hand and those people only have so much time.
Meanwhile, the only limitation in creating these AI systems is in how much RAM/compute we can manufacture.
It sounds more like when AI won in Go for the first time. People were looking at the game and saying “humans don’t play like that, we don’t understand those moves”.
I don’t think that’s what’s being said. More like the complexities of the solution are taking a while to understand because it is a complex solution using complex math. Even the smartest people in their fields can’t always look at a solution and at a glance understand everything without truly digesting what they’re seeing.
Now, after release, here’s an example of the initial thoughts of someone who had spent time on one of the solved problems:
In other words, this person doesn’t yet know if it’s correct.
I think people really need to understand the “it just took a bunch of public work and connected the pieces” isn’t a gotcha for LLMs: it’s one of the sales pitches. The cross-discipline general knowledge combined with the ability to churn huge datasets to find connections across already-known work, and extrapolate to or derive novel findings, is exactly one mode of superhuman success that AI companies have been trying to achieve.
The bigger issue is that they may be camping human efforts then kill-stealing the last hit on the boss by burning millions of dollars to get a proof a few days/weeks/months earlier than when it would have happened without AI. Basically, waiting for problems to be all-but-formally solved, then beating the researchers to the punch; like the recent Millenium controversy
Exactly.
Like in the quoted picture, there’s not a huge amount of people who have deep knowledge of Number Theory and the number of them who are also similarly versed in the math behind Quantum Physics could probably be counted on one hand and those people only have so much time.
Meanwhile, the only limitation in creating these AI systems is in how much RAM/compute we can manufacture.
You need large volumes of high quality training data too, which are btw much harder to come by now
Making things very obscured is not a proof.
The guy is politely saying it’s nonsense
It sounds more like when AI won in Go for the first time. People were looking at the game and saying “humans don’t play like that, we don’t understand those moves”.
I think it’s more that he’s saying “interesting approach, but not verified yet.”
I don’t think that’s what’s being said. More like the complexities of the solution are taking a while to understand because it is a complex solution using complex math. Even the smartest people in their fields can’t always look at a solution and at a glance understand everything without truly digesting what they’re seeing.
Not sure if “really complicated” or “√-1”
Can you expand on how you came to this conclusion?
That is not at all what he just said
it’s a pretty inconclusive statement , and can be interpreted.
Post here when he and others say it’s correct