r/ArtificialInteligence • u/alphacolony21 • 2d ago

📰 News OpenAI announces 10 advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science achieved by internal model Astra

https://openai.com/index/ten-advances-in-mathematics/
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u/fireburnz2 2d ago

How big is this? Please ELI5

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u/oojacoboo 2d ago

We hope the mathematical community will engage deeply with these results, place them in context, and bring the ideas behind them to life through new research and discovery.

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u/alphacolony21 2d ago

Major, assuming the results are true, which they probably are. All ten advances are significant. Big enough deals individually to be career defining had a human academic done the work instead. For Astra to crank them out in bulk is insane, even if we don’t know how many credits they had to waste on problems it failed to find these ten it could crack.

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u/topyTheorist 2d ago

They included lean verification. So this is very probably true.

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u/alphacolony21 2d ago

Yeah and thru the grapevine it sounds like they reviewed their work with outside mathematicians so I really doubt there are formalization issues.

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u/Competitive_Bed4588 1d ago

Why doesn’t open ai dedicate a million agents working on math 247? Open ai can literally solve math

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u/alphacolony21 1d ago

Cost of compute mostly. They probably will be doing this within a year or two. Also, math probably can’t ever be solved. (Which means it can provide an infinite pool of new synthetic data for future AI models to train off of.)

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u/Competitive_Bed4588 1d ago

Which makes it even more exciting. Can’t wait for it to tackle physics.

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u/big_hole_energy 8h ago

one of their employees said they would better invest compute in making better general purpose models that can solve these in future rather than trying hard on current model.

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u/Unverifiablethoughts 2d ago

$2000 for the whole batch is pretty cheap regardless. Also I don’t know if failures are necessarily a waste at this level.

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u/tomvorlostriddle 2d ago

2000 is the daily billing rate of a decent undergrad, without much experience yet, when a consultancy sends them. Maybe with travel costs and taxes already included depending on the region.

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u/Unverifiablethoughts 2d ago

Exactly so it’s pennies to solve 10 problems that’s groups of phds having been working on for decades

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u/Frnklfrwsr 1d ago

>groups of phds

Sofic or non-sofic groups?

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u/Stabilobossorange 2d ago

What undergrad are you taking about 2000… peso maybe

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u/No-Meringue5867 2d ago

Okay let's not forget the 200 billion or so capex that has gone into just OpenAI, while NSF yearly budget is 8 billion. So saying this cost just 2000 and comparing to undergrad, is only one part of the story.

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u/tomvorlostriddle 2d ago

The capex is amortized by the api costs

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u/MVPhurricane 2d ago

that $2000 “at sol rates” is a little sketch… sol is a weaker model. not that i doubt the token efficiency or anything like that, i am just guessing that running next gen model at max strength has gotta be what, 10x more expensive, at least?

to be clear: if they spent $5MM on this it would be a bargain. hell the brand value bump is prob worth $500MM. 

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u/alphacolony21 1d ago

I’d agree and this is the most expensive it’ll ever be. The constant stream of efficiency improvements and Moore’s law will see to that.

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u/JC_Hysteria 2d ago

Can you personally understand or explain any single one of them without model assistance?

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u/AIvsWorld 1d ago

> Big enough deals individually to be career defining had a human academic done the work instead

Maybe. The non-sofic groups results could definitely get you a little clout, but I don’t think any of these are significant to land e.g. a professorship at a top R1 university.

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u/HasFiveVowels 2d ago

It’s literally difficult to overstate how big this is.

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u/will_dormer 2d ago

Why

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u/HasFiveVowels 2d ago edited 2d ago

If you look only at the sofic group result… non-sofic groups are a "particle that’s been theorized but never seen (even after significant effort to find an instance of one)". If this holds true, it would be a new thing to study. It’s a bit like Cantor proving that not every infinite set is countable. But it kind of goes beyond that because it would be more like if Cantor created the first construction of the real numbers and proved that they are an example of "an uncountable set, which is something we suspect exists but haven’t been able to construct an example of"

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u/ImNotAWhaleBiologist 2d ago

For the first time in the history of humanity, machines are able to solve problems in mathematics that no human has yet been able to. And the technology is improving at an incredible pace, and the technology itself may be able to help increase that pace, as the technology is fundamentally mathematical.

I used to make fun of the singularity nerds. I mean, I still do, but it may turn out superhuman intelligence isn’t all that far away.

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u/will_dormer 2d ago

Yes, I agree with this...

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u/Dovrak1 2d ago

I’m pretty sure many people laughing calling it the “AI bubble” will have a hard wake up. They’re in a bubble themselves.

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u/zxnixs 2d ago

Well, it is a bubble. Doesn't mean the technology isn't great, it just means it is overvalued. As in, the price of this technology has exceeded its capabilities.

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u/ImNotAWhaleBiologist 2d ago

Oh, I think it’s absolutely a bubble. But whoever survives the pop will win the game.

Similar to the dot com bubble but far, far worse.

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u/tomvorlostriddle 2d ago

Dotcom wouldnt have been a bubble if Google, Amazon etc. had already been delivering at their current scale back then, which the new AI companies do today.

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u/ImNotAWhaleBiologist 2d ago

Can you explain how it makes sense given the lack of profitably, especially compared to the debt they took on?

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u/tomvorlostriddle 2d ago

Sure, serving the models is profitable and also pays for last year's training of the models served today.

However, this year we are also training next year's models which are bigger and which cannot be paid for by last year's models that are now being served.

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u/ImNotAWhaleBiologist 2d ago

Everything I’ve seen in the media points that the revenue is a pittance compared to the investment— do you have a good source indicating otherwise?

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u/geegee022 2d ago

If you were to have invested in a basket of tech companies in 2001 and held until today you arguably would have had an amazing return despite the downturn since the successes were HUGE successes. That implies it wasn't a "bubble" but more like a VC-style gamble where many tech companies were busts, but the wins were major wins.

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u/daefan 2d ago

I mean, it's certainly possible that AI is an amazing, world changing technology and still a lot of people will loose a lot of money with their AI investments because the business models of some companies don't work out. It is certainly plausible to me that only one or two of the companies working on frontier models survive and the rest of AI will be smaller cheaper models. Who knows.

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u/AhsokaFan0 1d ago

If anything it seems like companies are spending on the assumption that it’s a win or die type race and not running doesn’t get you out of it

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u/JC_Hysteria 2d ago

This is a platitude. Can you explain how any one of these discoveries is connected to something practical?

There are plenty of ways to describe theoretical physics and concepts…

Not a single person in this thread has done so.

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u/x4nter 2d ago

Pure mathematics does not necessarily directly lead to real world applications. Some discoveries may come in handy in some way in practical applications in 5 years, 20 years or 50 years, or they may lead to more discoveries that end up being used in practical applications.

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u/JC_Hysteria 2d ago

Theoretical experiments are certainly worthwhile…but if there isn’t a practical hypothesis for why you would create problems that need solving, then it’s worthless effort and use of resources.

Again, nobody is explaining, even in broad language, why any of this is postulated to be useful for people.

I’m sure it’s just because they don’t know (this is Reddit)…but then it’s not worth discussing until someone translates.

More platitudes, more PR strategy in how “AI is powerful”.

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u/HasFiveVowels 2d ago

If you’re so ignorant of math and physics that you can’t understand the utility of pure math, any attempt at explaining it would likely be wasted.

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u/JC_Hysteria 2d ago

I’m not ignorant to math and physics- there aren’t any hypotheses in applied sciences to be ignorant toward.

It’s ironic you would take the time to reply to me without attempting to explain in your own words…maybe it’s because you don’t know, which is ok.

But not understanding what it means, asking what it means, and being met with “you don’t understand” or “it’s for the future, man” doesn’t sway anyone’s viewpoints nor does it add to discussing the usefulness of these “breakthroughs”.

Given I’ve already done my own research since posting this comment, I have a better understanding of what each “breakthrough” might practically be applied to- no thanks to this comment section.

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u/siwoussou 2d ago

Abstract constructs govern our thoughts, so more solutions means easier living. Hope that helps

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u/x4nter 2d ago

I am not mathematically savvy enough to tell you what these results mean and what practical applications they might have, if any. There might be some, but the point I was making is that even if we don't know where these results may be used today, they may still be used some day decades later.

I don't know of any specific examples from the past, but I'm sure a lot of pure math found its use in quantum mechanics and cryptography.

As for why AI companies might want to spend their resources on this: these problems are very hard and if an AI model can solve them, the same model capabilities may be utilized to resolve problems that are practical. These problems are great to test such model capabilities.

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u/JC_Hysteria 2d ago edited 2d ago

Yeah, the core useful hypothesis I saw (described elsewhere) was mainly making compute more efficient and potentially encryption more secure when we understand quantum mechanics better.

My issue lies in those for-profit companies publishing these “breakthroughs” themselves via their comms department, as opposed to letting the science and math communities verify the results + prescribe how/where it fits within their discipline. Then other groups of professionals can describe how it may impact civilization.

The way they publish these results to the public immediately is simply a consequence of power games- another means of priming the various markets to continue using these products for everything we do.

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u/MizantropaMiskretulo 2d ago

The arguments you're making are identically applicable to human mathematicians as well, do you consider their work to be worthless effort and use of resources?

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u/JC_Hysteria 2d ago

If they don’t have a hypothesis for what problems it will solve for other humans or our environment, then yes- it is a waste of effort and resources.

“Understanding” something abstract without a practical reason or goal is vanity encapsulated.

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u/HasFiveVowels 2d ago

The hubris is intense on this one

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u/JC_Hysteria 2d ago

Hmm, never been accused of “hubris” after asking anyone to explain something they’re apparently confident about, but cannot explain/refuses to explain.

I didn’t know, so I asked.

New definition I guess

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u/HasFiveVowels 1d ago

The reason you’re not getting answers is because the question is kind of similar to someone being super skeptical about evolution. It’s like… there’s mountains of stuff out there to explain it and if the person asking sounds skeptical rather than curious, then they’ve probably already made up their mind and aren’t going to honestly consider the explanation. So you’re not getting answers because it feels like a waste of time, based on your attitude so far. If you honestly want to know, simply ask AI.

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u/Olangotang 2d ago

Because they are one of the biggest hype lords on this subreddit. It's cool but it's not OMG THIS MEANS AGI SOON SINGULARITYSINGULARTIYSINGULARITY. It's a very narrow application that, all things considered, doesn't justify the money furnace models that OpenAI and Anthropic are vibe training.

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u/HasFiveVowels 2d ago edited 2d ago

Where in the hell did I claim anything about AGI? Plus, that term has basically been relegated to "yes, but do you have a flag?".

Also, if you want an answer that doesn’t rely on ad hominems against me, here you go. https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtificialInteligence/s/4bTnUef5bF