>So I wouldn't really say that this result is using or creating some fundamentally new techniques in convex geometry or optimization theory. What this means from my perspective is that if a result is attainable with existing techniques, modern AI methods will be able to solve those problems. I don't think researchers in math/TCS will be made obsolete, but I think it will instead no longer make sense to work on any low-hanging, or even medium-hanging (you know what I mean) fruit. We'll be needed for problems where actual novel approaches are needed.
While they’ll never have the same subjective experience as humans, what stops an LLM from applying similar lines of thought* in a manner that results in a novel conjecture?
They are prediction machines, and so are we in a way. We can give them nearly limitless resources to scale their predictive capabilities. We have billions of years of training baked in. They distill directly from our knowledge and can walk down paths that no human has before.
It’s silly to say they’ll never do anything novel.
At their current capabilities, it sounds like they are already capable of being a specific type is research assistant. What will that look like in 10-20 years?
AI can be totally biased...
The fact that it can spout bullshit all day long to a human who can be tired and would actually act on the said bullshit, is not very comforting...
For example, an LLM could confidently declare something a tired human would take as a fact, but would backfire in a real world.
One thing is that an LLM can never assume, or find out, an inconsistency in its training data. Novel ideas often require correction of existing assumptions. As far as I understand, it is impossible, by design, for LLMs to contradict what is in its training data.
For example, an LLM trained on the data from an internet comprised of people who believe in the earth centric hypothesis can never say "Hey, that cannot be correct", or come up with the heliocentric alternative
But maybe it is not applicable to pure Math...
You state this as a fact - are you aware the question is unresolved?
EDIT: I'd love to know why you're downvoting me for stating a known fact.
I can confidently state that GPT-5.6 Sol is not experiencing the same reality as me. They _might_ be "experiencing" and I personally think they are, but their reality and experience is not the same as ours.
Maths was already infinite, it's still infinite, but who wants to spend all their lives changing rooms inside Hilbert's Hotel?
Most of us aren't Terence Tao
How's It Hanging, Brother?
Sure, it's not a breakthrough that opens new roads in mathematics- is this where the goalpost has moved now?
Oh wait, sorry, I do know why you're getting downvoted. Fear.
Humans have a deep need to be special magic flowers - and they can't stand it when science eventually shows them they're not.
But if the current trends continue, Elon will own all of the robots and the rest of us will be at his mercy.
How we change that - I don't know. But I do know we don't change it by putting our heads in the sand. AI is here and it is real. We MUST take it seriously. Shunning is not a viable option.
Whether that's UBI, or Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism, or UBS, or some AI managed economy, or some other such thing, we need to decide that "hey, we don't want to tied survival to output under our current system."
That's really the Rubicon we have to cross, and there are a LOT of people who can't really come up with a better way in their own heads yet.
Look, we all saw how things can be during the pandemic. That was a dark time, but it also gives us a model, we can just... do things. We just have to decide to do them.
WTF does the pandemic have to do with this? "dark time", oh yeah, people stuck at home watching Netflix, what an incommensurable suffering!
Buddy, I can admire the naive childish optimism to a degree, but come on. "We just have to all decide". Do you live in a Disney movie?
I'm not sure, but if I may guess, I suspect he's talking about the fact that the entire US shut down for a year and people survived because the US Government printed money and gave it away free to businesses so they wouldn't collapse. (PPP loans.)
If we can do something like that for the pandemic, we can do something similar when push really comes to shove.
Like, am I crazy here? The rules that we live by are largely made up and the points don't matter - we can decide to live in a better world if we want to. It's hard, and there are obstacles, for sure, but this appeal to doom for the sake of doom just... why? We have made unfathomable progress over the last century and if we keep trying we can make progress like that over the next century too!
OK, this is Twitter-level conversation here, not interested. But hey, stay positive, more power to you.
But we also decided during that time to literally pay people to stay home for awhile. That was a really revolutionary thing and it was awesome. We could decide to do that again.
You can ad hominem until the cows come home, but yeah, we literally just kind of have to collectively decide that there are better ways to do things.
There's a fantastic book called "The Last Emperor of Mexico" I read a few years ago that really talks about how the idea of a Republic or Democracy in general was a pretty novel concept in the mid 1800s. People were a lot more skeptical about it than we're lead to believe now. But eventually, the ideas of aristocracy and some "well bred" group of various types of monarchs became silly on it's face. Now the default is that we should have some sort of democratic representation. That would seem utopian AF in 1820.
Well, we're going to have to bridge that sort of gap for getting rid of the need to justify our existence through work too. The transition is going to be weird, but we'll have to come up with something else and run with it.
Dream big buddy, I know it's hard, lord knows I do, but dream big, and work little by little towards those things you want to see in the world.