This group came together after OpenAI approached some of its members about establishing an external advisory board. In agreement with OpenAI, they decided to create an independent group and invite others to join.
What a stupid, anti-intellectualism take. Quite literally every single thing you use in your daily life is deeply ingrained in the research of mathematicians for literally thousands of years.
The list is so long I couldn't even begin to describe
Advisory groups, especially ones stacked with prominent individuals, are where concepts go to die. They’re taken straight from the financial services playbook. Anyone remember all those climate/finance advisory groups from 2020/21? They’re all defunct now, having achieved nothing.
I don’t think Chinese models care one iota about any of these advisory groups. Even if they’re one year behind the curve, a year or two is a piss drop in the grand scheme of things.
Who knows if they are behind or not?! Things like advanced math and advanced hacking require you to put a ton of effort into specifically training for those skills, and I've not seen any indication that the Chinese AI companies are interested in doing that - they seem more business focused.
There are three big things in this announcement it seems.
In addition to resolving the Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize problem , this model has now resolved more than 100 long-standing open problems across most areas of mathematics.
Rumor was they were sitting on the solution to the Hodge conjecture. I wonder if thats one of these.
The group will advise on the review and communication of emerging results.
With hundreds of results, and the seeming exponential vertical from earlier in summer (10 major results from Astra, now hundreds...) I do wonder how exactly such a group decides to disseminate results. If it will instantly bottleneck. I mean I checked their site and it seems to be a google form asking for opinions.
Importantly, the group will not be responsible for advising us on how to pace our internal progress on mathematics.
Spicy. I think the super intelligence benchmark for me is P vs NP. That one I know is proper hard and feel it in my bones.
In related notes I watched a panel of mathematicians discuss AI recently on YouTubes. Specifically the hlf26 one. [0]. I also watched Terrence Taos recent one on SAIR [1]. In addition to a few others like Tom Rocks and Martin Hairer [2]. Whats abundantly clear is that no one has any answers to what this means for the future of mathematics. They all waffle about what anyone is going to be doing in a few years.
It's funny coz this was what humans were supposed to be doing in techno-utopia, while AI does all the boring stuff. I don't think many predicted art and theoretical math would be first to fall to the machines.
The next few years are gonna be very rough for the human exceptionalism crowd.
Rumor was they were sitting on the solution to the Hodge conjecture
I think someone at OpenAI (Brockman?) claimed they had "made substantial progress on it", but there is a mathematician on Twitter offering a $25,000 bet, with no takers, that they have not solved it, and that the "substantial progress" they have probably made would still leave them a lot further from a solution than they imagine.
I also see someone else on Twitter claiming to have used AI to understand what the Hodge conjecture is. :)
I really wish OpenAI would fire their PR department (incl. mathematicians), and concentrate on trying to build AGI, or RSI, or generate tons of money, or whatever they are trying to do.
It feels like publicity stunt. Of they really care about research, they would at least have given more reasonable citations in the Navier-Stokes paper.
That is precisely the concern of mathematicians (getting proof without getting the knowledge to humanity):
But solving problems is only a tool and proxy for achieving the primary goal of conceptual understanding and insight. Forgetting this in the world of AI may turn the tool against the primary goal. Indeed, the mass production at faster and faster pace of "true/false" statements could destroy fertile ground instead of breathing life into new ideas.
I predict it's only going to get worse. So far, in software, all AI companies push for results that you don't necessarily need to understand (don't look at the code). I don't see any reason why they would change that posture for math.
"Your advice for making AI-obtained proof are sensible, but AI has progressed too much and I'm afraid you're obsolete and all math is now a compiler target and not an actual craft", is what I predict based on the exact same thing happening to software recently.
Mathematics has enough cultural capital within the AI companies that they get to have this "advisory board".
Nobody else is getting that. When/If the severe impacts on labor materialize, workers won't get an advisory board. They will just get fired, and the companies will celebrate it as efficiency wins.
I think it's time to get very very real about regulation/taxation. Token/Compute sales tax that gets redistributed as UBI?
You'd think they'd be able to read the room with all that artificial intelligence. This is just horrible PR. What use is the product if you're just cannibalizing your prospective market?
https://agmai.org/
More like these are the people who didn't refuse
The first field field has fallen to AI.
I wasn't convinced until the mathematics community started responding, openly, with severe distress.
What will be next?
What if I told you that... Most math research was useless anyway. AI is going to expose a lot of grift.
Mathematicians never claimed that it was useful. It is up to you to find a use for it.
There is not a lot of money in maths… what grift are you talking about?
What a stupid, anti-intellectualism take. Quite literally every single thing you use in your daily life is deeply ingrained in the research of mathematicians for literally thousands of years.
The list is so long I couldn't even begin to describe
No fucking way, I didn't realise. I was definitely talking about calculus.
Advisory groups, especially ones stacked with prominent individuals, are where concepts go to die. They’re taken straight from the financial services playbook. Anyone remember all those climate/finance advisory groups from 2020/21? They’re all defunct now, having achieved nothing.
I don’t think Chinese models care one iota about any of these advisory groups. Even if they’re one year behind the curve, a year or two is a piss drop in the grand scheme of things.
Who knows if they are behind or not?! Things like advanced math and advanced hacking require you to put a ton of effort into specifically training for those skills, and I've not seen any indication that the Chinese AI companies are interested in doing that - they seem more business focused.
Like in Yes Minister, when they from a committee for a "full investigation". Gowers is on it, of course.
There are three big things in this announcement it seems.
Rumor was they were sitting on the solution to the Hodge conjecture. I wonder if thats one of these.
With hundreds of results, and the seeming exponential vertical from earlier in summer (10 major results from Astra, now hundreds...) I do wonder how exactly such a group decides to disseminate results. If it will instantly bottleneck. I mean I checked their site and it seems to be a google form asking for opinions.
Spicy. I think the super intelligence benchmark for me is P vs NP. That one I know is proper hard and feel it in my bones.
In related notes I watched a panel of mathematicians discuss AI recently on YouTubes. Specifically the hlf26 one. [0]. I also watched Terrence Taos recent one on SAIR [1]. In addition to a few others like Tom Rocks and Martin Hairer [2]. Whats abundantly clear is that no one has any answers to what this means for the future of mathematics. They all waffle about what anyone is going to be doing in a few years.
[0] https://youtu.be/H7_d_sgui6o
[1] https://youtu.be/PZRb6NIki2w
[2] https://youtu.be/G8HMa_tgM34
It's funny coz this was what humans were supposed to be doing in techno-utopia, while AI does all the boring stuff. I don't think many predicted art and theoretical math would be first to fall to the machines.
The next few years are gonna be very rough for the human exceptionalism crowd.
In fairness this is the boring stuff for a lot of people. :-)
I think someone at OpenAI (Brockman?) claimed they had "made substantial progress on it", but there is a mathematician on Twitter offering a $25,000 bet, with no takers, that they have not solved it, and that the "substantial progress" they have probably made would still leave them a lot further from a solution than they imagine.
I also see someone else on Twitter claiming to have used AI to understand what the Hodge conjecture is. :)
I really wish OpenAI would fire their PR department (incl. mathematicians), and concentrate on trying to build AGI, or RSI, or generate tons of money, or whatever they are trying to do.
It feels like publicity stunt. Of they really care about research, they would at least have given more reasonable citations in the Navier-Stokes paper.
"Advisory Group"
What I predicted 9 months ago came to pass:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46284897#46286785
That is precisely the concern of mathematicians (getting proof without getting the knowledge to humanity):
I predict it's only going to get worse. So far, in software, all AI companies push for results that you don't necessarily need to understand (don't look at the code). I don't see any reason why they would change that posture for math.
"Your advice for making AI-obtained proof are sensible, but AI has progressed too much and I'm afraid you're obsolete and all math is now a compiler target and not an actual craft", is what I predict based on the exact same thing happening to software recently.
This alone feels like a horrible new paradigm
Mathematics has enough cultural capital within the AI companies that they get to have this "advisory board".
Nobody else is getting that. When/If the severe impacts on labor materialize, workers won't get an advisory board. They will just get fired, and the companies will celebrate it as efficiency wins.
I think it's time to get very very real about regulation/taxation. Token/Compute sales tax that gets redistributed as UBI?
You'd think they'd be able to read the room with all that artificial intelligence. This is just horrible PR. What use is the product if you're just cannibalizing your prospective market?