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[–] 170 points 1 day ago* (50 children)

https://archive.is/20261006201825/https://www.wired.com/story/openai-is-pissing-off-a-bunch-of-mathematicians-again/

TLDR:

Most of the "mathematical breakthroughs" from AI have been done by loading all available recent research from humans solving the problem, and then collating it while skipping reviews and telling the humans who did the work it would literally be "too complicated" to explain the AI didn't actually do anything...

It's all just lies to drive up stock prices, what they release appears to be stuff that would be released shortly anyways, it's just being dumped at once 99% of the way done before it's verified.

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  • [–] 12 points 22 hours ago* (11 children)

    I don't have an English source, but on this trustworthy French public service radio scientific podcast, 2 mathematicians (from reputed organizations, including one Henri Poincaré Prize) are discussing the Navier-Stokes AI solution. https://www.radiofrance.fr/franceculture/podcasts/la-science-cqfd/ia-et-mathematiques-quand-la-solution-pose-probleme-5497880
    They say that the results are legitimate and proven through mathematical proof software. It did build on recent progress by humans, but it would still have taken years for humans to get there, because AI could explore so many paths in a much shorter time than a few human specialists can.
    They explain the help from AI is technically remarkable, and people who don't recognize it are in denial. They think mathematics research without AI will not make any sense soon. There's also some hope that it will allow focusing on new interesting problems that the current AI cannot solve yet. They also discuss the problem of AI being owned by foreign mega corporations and that's a risk for public research produced for the common good.
    I'm probably going to get downvoted for this unpopular opinion here, just know that I also hate the social and environmental impact of AI, but denying its effectiveness is clearly irrational now.

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  • [–] 10 points 19 hours ago (1 child)

    How the robot proves these statement is by writing LEAN code that represents the math. If the lean compiles, the math was valid. If it doesn't, it tries again.

    It will do this forever until it finds a solution.

    Goedel predicted this in 1933, btw. From his work on formal systems, he ascertained that since every mathematical statement is trivially true following from the rigorous application of the axioms of mathematics or entirely false, theorems could be checked and proven automatically.

    These systems are able to prove statements at a scale beyond humans, because they have effectively infinite time to exhaustively explore applying every rule.

    Unfortunately, this isn't all that helpful for the various fields of math as a whole. Effectively they have a list of statements and a second column with 'true' or 'false', but the actual route taken by the models to get that answer is often incredibly indirect and therefore difficult to gain insight from and apply to new areas. The approach taken to produce an answer is often more valuable to the field than the answer itself.

    The field moves forward when the people in it understand the new results and techniques sufficiently to begin asking new questions, simply giving the answer isn't all that useful. The robots cannot (yet) do this. Someone has to, at a minimum, pose the question in formal mathematical language. There are an infinite number of true statements in mathematics ( trivial example 1=1, 2=2, ...) asking the interesting questions is the important part. The field will still only advance as fast as the people in it are able to digest results.

    Further, results in pure math do not generalize to the more applied fields that directly affect our ability to do things. Most engineering formulae are NOT rigorously true - they are weak approximations with envelopes of applicability. The same is true even in base physics. So while a robot can crank through ten million lines of lean to prove an obscure theorem, it cannot think about physics for a week and come up with a theory of quantum gravity.

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  • [–] 1 point 13 hours ago

    Well written and agreed. I think suddenly having many new statements that are proven true, with probably some of them being unexpected, will have serious impact on research directions, even if it still takes time to digest and find useful applications.

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  • [–] 2 points 14 hours ago* (1 child)

    I am more skeptical. Even with Navier Stokes, I never heard anyone actually internalize the result and have trust in it. I just heard vague lean-dih waving.

    Supposedly it's 26000 subtheorems of goobledigook, feels untameable.

    Mathematicians seemingly: Axioms are correct, we trust lean => Result correct.

    As a physics, CS thinker: AI probably found a bug in our axioms. And/or usual self-referential math issue. And/or connected to Goedel's incompleteness. Also I wonder why I even trust lean as much, havent even read its code. Most software works great until somebody starts poking at its limits.

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  • [–] 1 point 12 hours ago

    Even if it's finding bugs in those, it would be progress. Imagine we can find bugs like that in many other problems, that's pretty valuable. Agreed it will take time to digest proofs and produce something new out of it.

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  • [–] 1 point 13 hours ago (1 child)

    Ok but actual practical real world use case exists for this? So we know that in theory an imaginary thing that doesn't exist could create a singularity event?

    Honestly seems like it's not useful but I'm not a mathematician so I don't really know.

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  • [–] 1 point 12 hours ago

    I think many theoritical researchers do not care about practical applications (from physics university time, I even remember a disdain from some students about applications because it's "dirty", meaning badly approximated). In any case, it's hard to predict, but sometimes theoritical results have real world impact eventually. Crazy theories like quantum physics and Relativity are used to for computing (semiconductors and newer quantum computers) and GPS now.
    Having this proven solution will probably motivate new research directions, and it could improve the understanding of this fluid mechanics equations, which has applications everywhere fluids are used...

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  • [–] 5 points 22 hours ago* (2 children)

    Because the AI contribution was so huge was surely the reason openAI did not want to give any credit to the researches that worked on the foundation for that breakthrough.

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  • [–] 2 points 20 hours ago (1 child)

    Assume all that is true, AI can really do well in these fields, but there are some other fields it can't do well in.

    Now who is going to work on those fields? Who is going to take the risk of studying for it, practicing for years, being an expert in the field that takes maybe a decade, and the AI can suddenly solve your field too, and you don't get anything.

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  • [–] 1 point 12 hours ago

    Yeah, we also need to solve the attribution and retribution for the people who contributed to the result, and we can't expect this to happen from mega corps alone.

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  • [–] 3 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

    It's a 20/80 rule thing.

    Coming up with a proof is the first 20% of work. Actually checking and validating the proof is the next 80% of work.

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  • [–] 1 point 13 hours ago (1 child)

    I learned it as 80/20 rule where the first 80% of progress is made with 20% of effort, and the last 20% of progress takes 80% of the effort.

    It's true im many layers deep in it help

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  • [–] 3 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

    I'm assuming this is about the 372 math "breakthroughs" they recently posted. The top "discoveries" seem to be trivial cases that don't give much insight into the broader conjectures and many of them don't even have a lean proof so they can't remotely be trusted as correct (and having a lean proof isn't necessarily proof that it's correct either). They basically crapped out everything the AI did and said you figure out!

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  • [–] 61 points 1 day ago* (16 children)

    Doing 10%, or less, of the work and taking credit for it. Add this to the bucket for "Reasons AI can replace the C-suite"

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  • [–] 10 points 1 day ago (14 children)

    I know people always say that, but there still needs to be executives so there's still humans to be held accountable.

    The vast amount of middle management are useless, but there has to be a human sitting in a chair above the chatbot for legal liability. Otherwise the board will just blame the chatbot for everything.

    That also doesn't mean they should be paid so much, just that a human needs to be above the chatbot as far as final authority

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  • [–] 1 point 18 hours ago

    Why though? If you needed the CEO to be held accountable, isn’t that because their role implies accountability for their actions?

    If you outsource those actions to a tool, then accountability falls on whoever is using the tool. So the board, or whoever, gets the accountability. That sounds reasonable to me.

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  • [–] 24 points 1 day ago* (4 children)

    When was the last time a CEO or board member was held accountable? Or any time? Apart from that dude that caught a bullet.

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  • [+] -8 points 1 day ago (3 children)

    Who is saying they shouldn't be held accountable?

    Like, it's like you're arguing we need to disband the fire department because we keep having house fires...

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  • [–] 29 points 1 day ago* (4 children)

    Of course that logic requires that executives actually be held accountable... for instance, due to illegal behavior on the part of their company...

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  • [–] 12 points 1 day ago (3 children)

    Yes...

    Holding people accountable, means we have to hold people accountable...

    The solution to not holding people accountable, isn't to make it harder to hold people accountable. The solution is actually holding the right people accountable.

    I'm glad we can get on the same page

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  • [–] 3 points 1 day ago* (2 children)

    I mean, yeah, I'm not arguing with your conclusions, I just think you're overly optimistic.

    Nobody is talking about putting Altman in jail for violations of the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act, even though that's exactly what should be happening. Instead they've got investors lining up around the block to buy a piece of it.

    You seem a bit defensive though.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 day ago* (1 child)

    Nobody is talking about putting Altman in jail for violations of the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act, even though that’s exactly what should be happening.

    Republicans control the House, Senate, and Oval right now...

    Do I really need to explain why they're not doing anything?

    You can't figure that one out on you're own?

    I just think you’re overly optimistic

    Midterms are in a month...

    You seem a bit defensive though.

    Because midterms are in a month, and a shit ton of people are pushing really hard that nothing can ever be done so it's pointless to try.

    Be a doomer after midterms and I won't give a fuck. But right now trump and the AI techbros are spending a shit ton of money to convince the left not to vote.

    Don't do their work for them.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 day ago (4 children)

    sidenote: why do people still use archive.today and archive.is, even after it tampered with archived snapshots, and used website visitors to DDOS other websites: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archive.today

    Why not just use archive.org?

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  • [–] -3 points 1 day ago (3 children)

    Super fucking sorry that my finding a way around the paywall wasn't good enough for you.

    But of course, you couldn't even link it either for some reason.

    So here's what I say we do:

    You block me so you never see me putting effort in, you'd have came here, not seen my link or any discussion.

    And then maybe you'd actually provide your paywall removed link for everyone instead of bitching.

    Now I'm doing something to, don't worry.

    I'm going to block you, because obviously it's hard for me to put up stupid shit like this.

    And I just never want to see anything from you again.

    Everyone wins champ.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 hours ago

    Whoa holy overreaction batman.

    My comment wasn't directed only at you, which is why I used the broader term "people". I was just wondering if people had a legitimate reason to use archive.is over archive.org, considering I overwhelmingly see the former over the latter nowadays.

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  • [–] 4 points 22 hours ago (1 child)

    Super fucking sorry that my finding a way around the paywall wasn’t good enough for you.

    @hirihit640@sh.itjust.works could have probably worded their comment in a less aggressive tone, but this is not about not being "good enough". This is about archive.is running malicious code on users' browsers.

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  • [+] -5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (6 children)
  • [–] 7 points 1 day ago* (5 children)

    In conversations with WIRED, the academics say they feel the field has become a playground for OpenAI and its rival Anthropic to show off their models as both prepare for blockbuster initial public offerings. In their rush to outdo each other, mathematicians say, traditional scientific processes for releasing and attributing results have been cast aside.

    The most striking case so far came in September. OpenAI deployed thousands of agents to solve a legendary million-dollar Millennium Prize problem after hearing “rumors” that others were closing in on solutions. Tristan Buckmaster, a mathematician and professor at New York University, accused the company of front-running the work he had done toward solving an element of the problem in a personal collaboration with Anthropic employee Levent Alpöge. The pair hadn’t published their work but had been using OpenAI’s tools to help them.

    Humans stole human work for their bots...

    During an attempt to negotiate credit, Buckmaster claims, OpenAI researcher Sébastien Bubeck seemed to imply that Alpöge should be excluded from any paper, since that would make things complicated. (In response to a request for comment, Bubeck pointed to a previous public statement in which he denied asking for Alpöge to not be listed as an author.) Buckmaster said he refused. In a call, Bubeck claimed that there is some worry about what Anthropic is doing, according to meeting notes seen by WIRED. Levent must be talking to his leadership right now letting them know fucking OpenAI can get a Millennium Prize problem, he said, per the notes. What’s to stop Anthropic from giving all their compute to get a Millennium Prize problem?

    The humans stole the credit from the other human to give it to chatbots...

    According to the notes, Bubeck also seemed to suggest that Buckmaster would be ruining his career when Buckmaster threatened to tell the press about his belief that OpenAI had stolen his work. If you don't want me to be nice, then I don't have to be nice, Bubeck said, according to the meeting notes.

    The humans at OpenAI threatened the human if he tried to claim credit.

    But you really should read the full article

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  • [+] -5 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (4 children)
  • [–] 5 points 1 day ago* (3 children)

    I’m talking about models specialized at theorem proving.

    That's not what the article is about or anyone is talking about...

    They're talking about something much worse and you're ignoring it and trying to get everyone to talk about something else.

    I don't know why you're doing, but I'm already doubting you're going to stop. Either in this thread or any other place you want to shove an uninformed opinion about an unrelated topic.

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  • [+] -6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)
  • [–] 3 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    about a topic they like from time to time.

    That's not what you did...

    You saw a headline, and replied to a comment that provided a non paywall link...

    Talking about something completely different than the article...

    And got kind of upset when the person tried clarify that you weren't talking about the article.

    Maybe this will help:

    Imagine you and your friends are talking about Pokemon, and I walked up and started talking about Yugioh, then yelled at you and all your friends when they didn't want to talk about Yugioh with me and instead continued your existing conversation.

    Hopefully that helps, I'll never know. Because I have a feeling I'm not the first to try and you'll do this again later.

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  • [–] -4 points 1 day ago (3 children)

    Your understanding of what they did is not correct. But also fuck OpenAI I am not going to explain their bullshit for them. So anyway put Sam Altman in prison is all I am going to say.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 day ago (2 children)

    If you really thought that, you could have just typed what you thought I was wrong about instead of a literally useless comment...

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