upvote
If OpenAI resolved the Riemann hypothesis by finding a nontrivial zero at 0.50000003 + 3531696584231.17843174i, that would be very cool and probably very impactful. But it might not necessarily demonstrate model capabilities beyond those which have already been demonstrated, especially if the session that found it was one of a thousand launched to explore different areas of the problem space.

More generally, do you expect that there's some capability threshold where people will no longer study or analyze AI model outputs, and instead just sit there slack jawed saying "so cool!" every time OpenAI announces novel ones? I don't really understand why that would be or why someone would want that. If you're interested in the pure experience of a complex machine outputting satisfying results, I'd recommend getting into sports cars.

reply
Ok are you one of those people whose first reaction to such a news is “this is just marketing for OpenAI and we need transparency”? In that case you are just interested in culture wars and not results.
reply
It would be my reaction if we're discussing a blog post from OpenAI, yes. I would be looking at it extremely critically, wondering what they're misrepresenting to make it look cheaper, easier, and why they're trying to make it look like only their model could possibly do this.

Look at their recent claims about their model "escaping" - there was literally a Guardian article calling them out for being hyperbolic! Again, it wasn't that they lied, their marketing department is too savvy for that. They just present it in way that's, well, marketing.

As for the actual result, I'll look for secondary posts by actual mathematicians and draw my conclusions there, not from this marketing blog post about results from a secret model.

reply
Hmm. But this level of skepticism looks performative and seems to serve as a signalling thing rather than a functional thing. You do you though. If OpenAI solves the millenial problems, my skepticism will only be restricted to the correctness of proof. Not that it was "marketing" haha
reply
> If OpenAI solves the millenial problems, my skepticism will only be restricted to the correctness of proof. Not that it was "marketing" haha

Company X does not make money from proving theorems but does make money from selling you a service which supposedly proves theorems. Company X then proves some theorems and explicitly calls out they were very cheap to prove using its service.

And you think you're actually clever for taking these facts at face value? Interesting.

reply
do you think you are clever for being skeptical about LLMs if OpenAI comes up with a correct proof of Reimann's hypothesis? "but you shouldn't trust OpenAI because something something marketing"

i would classify you as a flat-earther if that happens.

reply
> do you think you are clever for being skeptical about LLMs

brother like 3 people have pointed out what they're skeptcal of is cost not LLMs - at this point you're willfully misconstruing what people are saying to you just to get a kick out of repeating your same tired strawman.

reply
Brother I already conceded that money is somewhat important but it is missing forest for the trees.

If OpenAI solved Reimanns hypothesis and the first comment is says something about lack of transparency and marketing, i would say it’s ignorant.

reply
To "solve it" would require either a single counter example disproving the claim, or a proof that the conjecture about the Riemann zeta function is true.

If OpenAI claimed the conjecture to be true but provided no details about the proof then the first comment should absolutely be about lack of transparency.

reply
> no details about the proof

do you really imagine a scenario where OpenAI would claim to solve it and not give details about the proof? how is this even possible? why would anyone believe them?

reply
> looks performative

That's one of those phrases you can use to dismiss opposing viewpoints without actually engaging with them.

reply