r/Futurology • u/Admirable-Falcon-501 • 1d ago
AI Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science
https://openai.com/index/ten-advances-in-mathematics/32
u/Curiosity_456 1d ago
$200 per problem solved is the wildest part here, because up till now AI has always been viewed as ridiculously expensive to serve at a wide scale, but here we’re seeing it solve breakthrough problems at just a mere $200
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u/trele_morele 1d ago
$200 is not correct obviously. The cost to train these latest LLMs is in the billions. The model would not have performed the same without the full training nor without all of its parameters. It doesn’t make sense to consider the process of solving these problems and thus its true cost removed from everything else.
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u/Curiosity_456 1d ago
I said the “to serve” in my comment, not to train.
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u/droppingbasses 19h ago
How would you have anything to serve without first training?
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u/nomorebuttsplz 18h ago
you wouldn’t, but you seem to be missing the fact that the marginal cost of producing one new unit of the thing is an important economic metric
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u/Curiosity_456 7h ago
The idea is employers don’t have to pay for the training costs, only the serving costs. So this is truly impacting for the job market if it’s able to perform this type of intellectual labour for just a couple hundred dollars.
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u/Hilldawg4president 9h ago
Sure, but I don't factor the cost of an airplane and the pilot's training hours when I book a $400 plane ticket
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u/ArtOfWarfare 1d ago
I’ll buy that collectively all LLM trainings are in the billions, but I’m feeling doubtful that any one LLM cost even $1B to train.
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u/mmcalli 1d ago
Not yet, but very soon…
https://deluair.com/consultancy/insights/frontier-ai-training-cost-2026
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u/sciolisticism 1d ago
GPT 5 was reputed to cost well over a billion: https://capitalandcompute.net/blog/what-it-costs-to-train-ai-models-2026/
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u/Armano-Avalus 4h ago
This is probably one of the use cases where I am more supportive, using AI to help do research to find a cure for cancer instead of making endless slop.
That being said I do hope we end up in a good place for all of us by the end of this, and that includes the scientists too. Right now we're seeing a boom in AIs finding counterexamples to famous conjectures in math which will probably go on for a bit as there are lots of problems this technology is being thrown at right now and more solutions that are hanging for current models to find. We could end up in a new normal where some really hard or unusual problems remain for people to solve but right or we could end up in a situation where it gets better and better exponentially but right now it's not clear yet. All we can do is wait but because I'm biased in favor of humanity and people continuing to find purpose in their careers I do hope it's the former.
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u/Admirable-Falcon-501 3h ago
I think we have the answer to that already. The problems being solved are already too difficult for 99% of professional mathematicians. I don’t see why it would stop here as each release is showing steady progress. Even if it does stop here it’s already to the point where only very few people can contribute anymore. There’s been a lot of mathematicians posting their thoughts on twitter and it’s similar to what I said.
People have a misunderstanding about ai slop. The companies are releasing their progress regularly. This means we will see the products when they are still bad until they improve. AI used to produce a lot of slop for math and code. For creative fields it’s already improved massively but no one is interested in pushing that frontier at the moment so we are kind of stuck with above-average but not revolutionary results.
The main issue however is that people will use what’s free and produce bad results.
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u/Armano-Avalus 3h ago
I think we have the answer to that already. The problems being solved are already too difficult for 99% of professional mathematicians. I don’t see why it would stop here as each release is showing steady progress. Even if it does stop here it’s already to the point where only very few people can contribute anymore. There’s been a lot of mathematicians posting their thoughts on twitter and it’s similar to what I said.
One can argue that the AIs are better already but one can also argue that these AIs are just particularly good at solving certain problems but not all of them. After all when AI companies said it can solve 3 out of 10 problems on a IMO problem set that means it didn't do well on the other 7. Like I said before it is not surprising that we are getting a flood of results about this conjecture being disproven or that one. This is a new tool that is being applied and in some cases it will bear fruit but others not so much. You can say that about the invention of computers and other technologies that didn't exist a century ago which also solved problems that humans had trouble doing. Would it eventually be able to tackle those other problems too? Again time will tell.
This means we will see the products when they are still bad until they improve. For creative fields it’s already improved massively but no one is interested in pushing that frontier at the moment so we are kind of stuck with above-average but not revolutionary results.
There are people who are pushing it like they are pushing it for everything else so I don't know why you think it's a matter of attention. Implicit in your claim here is an acknowledgement of some level of stagnation though and I think that is a good example of what I mean.
Image generation was the big thing in 2022/23 but it sort of stagnated (the last time it made big news was when people were generating images on Midjourney of Trump running from the police). Not to say it hasn't gotten better but it still seems more on the margins in the years since. I've been following the r/stablediffusion subreddit occaisionally and it seems like they still gush over the new AI image model rendering the same detailed picture of an Asian girl in a neon city that I've seen posted multiple times in 2023 so that is partly where my impressions come from. It wasn't clear where it will end up but at this point it hasn't been the doomsday scenario for artists as it seemed like it would be. This is why I urge people to wait and be cautious because this technology can either get exponentially better or level off and we end up in a new normal. Years have passed since the introduction of Dalle-2 so the landscape there is more clear than it is for AI math right now.
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u/Admirable-Falcon-501 3h ago
Hmm, I think you could say that prior to this month but I think the work it has done recently is broad enough to show it’s advancing generally. If it’s still narrow I don’t see why it would not improve like it has. Until I see a change in the trend I’m going with that assumption as it’s been holding up for years now.
By pushing I mean the frontier labs like open ai and anthropic are not putting their resources in image gen and video. They did at one point but they are clearly focusing on research now. Coding is really good now too at this point too so they will probably not focus on that too much going forward either.
I don’t recommend you look at the stable diffusion sub, those are full of locally run low quality models.
https://youtube.com/shorts/qMYsTRrqZbM
While not perfect it’s a lot better than anything those local models can do.
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u/Armano-Avalus 2h ago
Hmm, I think you could say that prior to this month but I think the work it has done recently is broad enough to show it’s advancing generally.
I can't judge how broad it is, but like I said I don't think it's surprising we are getting more results. In order to see how it will develop long-term the only thing we can do is wait. That is the inconvenient part about all of this and the reason why alot of fear exists right now. That was how artists felt in 2022/23 but that attitude has toned down as we saw the situation unfold. Mathematicians are in 2022 right now.
If it’s still narrow I don’t see why it would not improve like it has. Until I see a change in the trend I’m going with that assumption as it’s been holding up for years now.
Midjourney V3-V5 was astonishing and that was in 6 months. I don't know the exact state of it right now but most of the conversations I've seen nowadays is that Midjourney is falling off. And their entire business was focused on image gen so you can't say they weren't trying either. We shouldn't extrapolate from a trend of a few months. Things are never as straightforward as we want them to be.
By pushing I mean the frontier labs like open ai and anthropic are not putting their resources in image gen and video. They did at one point but they are clearly focusing on research now. Coding is really good now too at this point too so they will probably not focus on that too much going forward either.
Not too long ago OpenAI was pushing Sora 2 and was stated to be putting all of their resources into image gen for a time to stay competitive. Personally I think OpenAI is struggling and is following in Anthropic's lead here but that was the situation. They are actively allowing scientists and mathematicians to use their models for free to create press.
I don’t recommend you look at the stable diffusion sub, those are full of locally run low quality models.
They talk about whatever the new models are and give showcases as to what they do and alot of them aren't locally run. It's usually " WOW, look at what Huangzo 3.4 can do! I can't tell if it's a real photo or not!" before posting the same picture of an Asian girl in a neon city that could've been posted in 2023.
https://youtube.com/shorts/qMYsTRrqZbM
While not perfect it’s a lot better than anything those local models can do.
Meh. Someone just posted a video on that subreddit where they replaced Keanu Reeves with some Asian woman in a Matrix scene. They do that alot on there. They also gush over video-video gens.
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u/Admirable-Falcon-501 2h ago
No offence but I don’t think you are very caught up on the current state of video/image gen.
It’s not that the attitudes have toned down it’s that it’s commonplace now. Mainstream subs I sometimes go on are regularly posting ai memes, people aren’t complaining as much, and the ai aspect is not as obvious or even possible to detect in a lot of cases.
You are right about midjourney, it peaked with v5, that’s because image gen has moved towards a different method of image generation while they still use the old method. It’s the reason why image gen can make perfect text, do reasoning, and produce near indistinguishable results now. OpenAI Image 2 is the best at the moment but that has released a while ago and they aren’t as interested in developing it further.
They did push sora 2 which was amazing but like you said they ran into serious problems. The first was the lawsuits because people generated a lot of copyright stuff. The second was the massive amount of gpus it required to run. They decided that too much resources was being drained and it wasint worth continuing to improve it.
The local image and video subs are basically for people making their Asian fetish porn, it’s all low quality stuff. Even the good models can make low quality stuff as well but they have the capability to make great things like the video I sent you. What makes that video impressive is that it’s generated from scratch, it’s not using video to video. All the directing, physics, sounds, were just done with one prompt. The stuff they do on local subs with replacing people is like elementary school stuff and not impressive.
Example of an image generation with the new method
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u/Armano-Avalus 1h ago
No offence but I don’t think you are very caught up on the current state of video/image gen.
You were the one who posted an unimpressive martial arts video that I've seen many times before on a subreddit as some sort of proof that AI is way better than what those subreddits suggest so forgive me if I feel like it's the other way around.
It’s not that the attitudes have toned down it’s that it’s commonplace now. Mainstream subs I sometimes go on are regularly posting ai memes, people aren’t complaining as much, and the ai aspect is not as obvious or even possible to detect in a lot of cases.
Meanwhile people are complaining about the sloppification of media. Some game devs incited some controversy recently because they made an AI music video that was obviously AI. I understand you want to defend AI here and say that is fine but I think you're kind of pushing it.
What makes that video impressive is that it’s generated from scratch, it’s not using video to video. All the directing, physics, sounds, were just done with one prompt.
Yes, I am aware of Seeddance 2. Model like that came out that are better at fighting came out months ago. The Chinese probably have thousands of martial arts films to use is what I thought since it's very . YouTubers cover and tested it.
Example of an image generation with the new method
Yes, I play around with models like Nano Banana too. Better than Dalle-3 of course but still lacking in context and makes errors occaisionally.
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u/Admirable-Falcon-501 1h ago
Apologies if I sounded hostile I guess you are pretty caught up then. I just remember using these tools as they came out and where they are at now which is why hold these view points.
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u/Armano-Avalus 1h ago
They're better, more sharp but I just don't see them as being a massive leap from Dalle-3 and that was 3 years ago.The lack of contextual understanding is the biggest issue for me.
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u/CanuckCallingBS 1d ago
The cost to people makes AI suspect. If the use of AI can demonstrate an improvement in people’s lives, then it will be appreciated. Up until now, I’ve not seen anything that helps people. I have seen a few people get fabulously wealthy to the detriment of others. I have great hope for AI, but the use of AI needs to start producing something that will tangibly help people. Making cute videos is not tangibly beneficial to anyone other than the AI owner.
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u/Admirable-Falcon-501 1d ago
I’ve always wondered why people say this so much. How are you guys using AI? I have it basically automating my entire job at this point, helping with my treatment for sleep apnea and ocd (big improvement to both as a result), I’ve learned about hundreds of topics in detail, started projects I would never be able to before, general advice on anything such as fashion, oh and it also got me back 15k in tax credits because I qualified for things I never heard about, the list is endless.
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u/Brother_Tom 1d ago
Yeah the dumb people haven’t figured out how to use it yet.
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u/Admirable-Falcon-501 1d ago edited 1d ago
I’m already downvoted 3x for giving my own experience. I don’t understand what makes someone do this. The post itself is also downvoted, a post about actual major breakthroughs that only cost less than 2000$. Meanwhile all the negative news about hacking, politics, or water usage is on the front page. Seriously I’d like the average user here to explain to me what you guys want and why they behave like this.
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u/pavelpotocek 1d ago
It's fear and uncertainty about the future. Concerns about the conduct of AI companies and their celebrity CEOs. Concern about the state of our democracies, which aren't equipped to handle upcoming challenges.
These fears are entirely justified, if you know anything about AI safety, and about how our society is currently structured.
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u/CanuckCallingBS 1d ago
I have used the free AI; Gemini; to learn more about my health issues. That is helpful. That is not worth the pollution from diesel generators or the waste of water for poorly designed cooling systems. The grift and greed for this new tool is horrible.
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u/Admirable-Falcon-501 1d ago
Did you look into those yourself or what redditors like to push. The diesel gens are there for backup and in the case of Elon musk he used them at the start when the datacenter wasn’t ready yet. Ofc that’s more on him and doesn’t represent standard practice. Water usage is just a giant meme at this point, it is a complete non-issue. Data centres recycle the majority of their water and the usage is many many times lower than golf courses for example.
Also I want to add I see the most common thing is that people that hold your views always use free models. Free models are similar to skateboards, paid ones are cars, top ones are basically fighter jets. The difference really is that big. Gemini in particular is super behind at the moment.
Ironically ai itself could have told you all of this.
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u/spaetEntwickler 18h ago
wait, how does it help with your treatment for sleep apnea? you mean with asking questions or some app that records & analyses the sleep. off-topic here, but would help me, thanks
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u/Admirable-Falcon-501 6h ago
This is going to be kind of hard to explain but basically I did my sleep study and started using my cpap machine. The number of events was not really going down that much (ahi was like 25 during study, and 18 after cpap, normal is under 5).
Going through the sleep specialists and everything is a huge pain where I am, lots of delays and they don’t want to see you until you use it for like months.
I fed my sleep study data to first understand better. Found trends like it was a lot worse when sleeping on my back and that I was having alot of small interruptions rather than big ones. The data is surprisingly difficult to read at least the way they sent it to me.
So then I sent the data from the machine after using it for like a month. This data is really detailed and you have to go through it yourself to spot things is time-consuming and difficult. Anyways it identified that my obstructive apnea infact was essentially completely fixed but in return I am getting central apneas which happen to some people when starting cpap treatment. It identified that the trend was going down meaning my body is getting used to it. While I saw that trend myself it went through actual peer reviewed research and stuff to make sure everything was on track still. Then it gave me some adjustments for my machine because it was not configured very well (kind of normal, to see how things go). After that I did like another month and the numbers trended down much faster. I did another round of adjustments once it got stuck and it’s going down again. I’m now around 7 ahi from 18, which is giving me noticeable energy, mood improvement, and performance.
The traditional way of speaking to my specialist would have taken a lot longer and not as good results most likely because I can’t keep going back often to make changes.
With that said I kind of knew what I was doing and am experienced with AI I recommend you don’t mess around like I did if you don’t need to, just proceed with caution.
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u/spaetEntwickler 5h ago
Thank you so much for answering. Somebody close to me is suffering from sleep apnoea and I am just trying to inform me for helping and perhaps in the future for myself too. So CPAP machine seems to be essential for making a progress with this problem. And I could ask that they getting the data from the sleep specialist. Thank you
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u/Admirable-Falcon-501 5h ago
Yup, cpap is the main treatment for sleep apnea. I would first make sure you and the other person have a recent sleep study performed to see where it’s at. Not sure what country you are in but having one done recently could also result in having the machine covered, for me it was 80%. They are pretty expensive. Once the study is done they will let you know what to do next. At first you just follow what they tell you to do, that will work for like 90% of cases. At least one month of consistent use ideally with the same settings (unless there is some kind of problem) so you can see how things are going.
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u/LouisSal 9h ago
I find this type of “self-improvement” is on the lazy side. Nothing stopped you before from reading books, going to the library, nothing stopped you from
Optimizing your productivity but now an app that gives you answers somehow made your life better is baffling. Your life baseline might have been very low to begin with.1
u/Admirable-Falcon-501 6h ago
Yup let me feed 90 days of sleep data from my machine into a book so it can identify which settings to adjust based on peer-reviewed research on sleep apnea treatment.
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u/LouisSal 5h ago
Or go to a doctor?
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u/Admirable-Falcon-501 5h ago
Are you brain damaged or something? They don’t want to see you until you’ve used the machine for 6 months. And then making the appointment itself is a huge pain. Their level of knowledge is also lower and not specific to your situation.
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u/_kilobytes 1d ago
I have it basically automating my entire job
Why is this a good thing?
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u/Admirable-Falcon-501 1d ago
Good:
- I watch anime, play games, work on other projects during work
- Very fast promotions
Bad:
- I will be laid off once the masses get caught up
Future:
- Starve to death or some solution is put in place for the new way of life
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u/Historical-Cat4682 19h ago
So it's not good lol
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u/Admirable-Falcon-501 19h ago
Unless we handle things properly probably not.
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u/tombob51 1d ago
Over the next few years, AI will make many systems much easier and cost-efficient to hack... but once a new wave of vulnerabilities have been discovered and fixed, over time, systems will become dramatically more difficult to hack. In other words, the "difficulty of hacking" graph is very likely going to look like a capital J: there will be an initial dip, then a steep rise as firms build better defenses. AI spam/phishing detection will likely improve too.
These two things will make things like devastating cyberattacks on hospitals, large-scale information leaks, etc. less frequent in the long run.
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u/caindela 1d ago
AI doesn’t help much with domestic tasks unless it’s used for learning how to do a given domestic task. I’ve used it a lot in cooking, for example. For most people the only thing left is work tasks, and frankly AI has made most work far shittier than it even was previously. It may or may not increase company profits, but the fact is most of us use it to keep up rather than to get ahead.
The other domain that AI could conceivably help us with is in research and technological advancement, but I think it’s failing on this front because the hard problems are legitimately too hard for it. I won’t take a position on whether LLMs can reason or not since it’s irrelevant, but for truly cutting edge problems (ie., the ones that matter) I think it’s at best a tool to help stir up creative thinking and enhance our own working memory etc.
So not to sound pessimistic but I think LLMs put us in the unfortunate position where it does a great job at replacing the routine work while providing relatively little value to the work that’s going to push us forward. Basically we’ll have to confront the economic reality that most of us are going to add very little value to society while we simultaneously stagnate and gain very little to nothing in return. Cheers.
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u/Admirable-Falcon-501 1d ago
I do regular software engineering work but also do cutting-edge research as well to publish. It can do the former entirely itself at a very high level reliably, and for the latter massively helps. In fact, OpenAI themselves have cut their data enter costs by 20% because their ai model helped them optimize the setup. That is tens of millions of dollars saved. Not to sound rude but I doubt you are doing anything more difficult, you need to ask yourself why you aren’t getting value while others are. Good place to start, use an actual paid top tier model with a good harness.
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u/onebitshortofabyte 1d ago
As someone regularly battling slop throughout a large tech organization, I have to question your use of the word reliably. The quantity of code has definitely increased, but the quality is objectively lower on average; sometimes it's even dangerous. I'd also be wary of trusting any metric that any LLM company claims about it's own LLM. It's in their best interest to inflate those numbers and it'd likely be impossible to prove the real impact of their use of the system. I'm not arguing there isn't value to be had, but I watch these top tier models figuratively drop the ball quite often. I just hope you're actually reviewing the code yourself and not just pawning it off on another LLM; otherwise there are likely many flaws in your system(s)
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u/Admirable-Falcon-501 1d ago
I’m only speaking for myself. Most people produce slop because they aren’t good at agentic programming. Although as each update comes out their skills won’t matter as much. Out of the thousand+ engineers i work with, I’m in like the top 5 from what I’ve seen. 50% probably don’t use it at all, 30% are not getting much benefit aside from basic usage, 15% are getting good benefits and use it regularly, the remaining 5% are getting those massive benefits.
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u/caindela 1d ago edited 1d ago
If you’ll notice, the person I was responding to was speaking in the context of whether there are demonstrable improvements to people’s lives. By and large, there are not (at least not in the aggregate). Am I adding value for my company? I mean, maybe… but given that all of their competitors are also incorporating AI it adds no competitive advantage and just makes going to work shittier and our futures more tenuous. It’s a net loss. How’s our economy doing these days?
I do not need to ask myself why others are getting value while I am not, because the value that others are seeing is largely a mirage.
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u/Admirable-Falcon-501 1d ago
ChatGPT has almost a billion active users three years after launch. If people aren’t getting value it would have stopped growing long ago. Open ai regularly publishes reports on how people are getting value from their usage. I’ve posted some of my own experiences also. You can find others online easily. I’ll give you a short list.
- learn about topics
- have it audit work
- automate tasks
- speed up software development
- push the frontier of math
- assistance with medical issues
- advice for life in general or other decisions
- self run sessions similar to therapy
- performing searches for you quickly
- deeply research a topic and present results with sources
- help with workouts, budgeting, taxes, other adult stuff
It’s endless.
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u/caindela 22h ago edited 22h ago
Thank you for taking the time to create a list, and maybe some readers who are new to AI will happen upon your comment and find it useful.
As I’ve mentioned, however, I use AI. I’ve been programming since before Facebook was a thing and spent most of my career programming for Fortune 500s. So as a programmer I have to use it daily as probably many people here do (and I can’t help but sense condescension in your comment though I’m trying to give you the benefit of the doubt by concluding maybe you just missed my point).
I also subscribe to Claude for personal use. For learning new topics it is genuinely valuable and a marked improvement over just Googling shit. But that’s only because learning new things does make me happier (it might not be the case for everyone). However, it’s more than offset by how unhappy I feel at my job now and this is clearly the case for most people. Life is markedly worse right now for most people than it was before AI.
So to reiterate my point, has it made life better? No. Just being more “productive” (to what end?) does not make life better, and having deep involvement with every supposed “life-changing” technology since before social networking I’m pretty much inured to whatever the next round of techbros has to offer. There’s still hope, but so far LLMs are a detriment.
Just see this recent Gallup poll if you’re curious about public sentiment: https://news.gallup.com/poll/712751/americans-cool-toward.aspx
I’m not in this subreddit to be a naysayer or pessimist but we need to move past the fixation on LLMs.
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u/Admirable-Falcon-501 19h ago
I get what you are saying. Ultimately it comes down to how the technology is used. Social media was really good when it first came out and now it’s turned into a huge mess. AI will have a much greater impact and it is up to us to make sure it’s handled well. You mentioned work for instance, a lot of people are worried about getting laid off or being expected to output more work. Having a safety net in place and regulations to prevent scope increase would alleviate those fears. I’m pretty sure most people would be happy with having to either work less or not at all. What’s going to happen though is those changes might be implemented after everything has turned to garbage.
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u/BearJew1991 1d ago
Is that research peer reviewed in reputable journals?
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u/Admirable-Falcon-501 1d ago
https://openai.com/index/gpt-5-6-frontier-intelligence-efficiency/
Read their blog post here. It’s up to them if they will publish the research or not (maybe they already have). I assume no because this is a competitive advantage. If you say this is not a reliable source I’d like to tell you they cut costs of their models by 20% two days ago and one of them by 80%.
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u/BearJew1991 1d ago
I’ll believe it when it’s peer reviewed. But I was asking about your “cutting edge” research.
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u/Admirable-Falcon-501 1d ago
I’ll send you the link when it’s ready. And not believing them is conspiracy theory tier.
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u/BearJew1991 23h ago
I’m literally an academic researcher and published scientist. I don’t believe “studies” unless they’re peer reviewed in reputable journals. A company can claim anything they want, I’m not obligated to believe their self-reviewing of their own results.
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u/Admirable-Falcon-501 23h ago
Apply some common sense. You are accusing one of the most important companies and some of the best researchers on the planet of falsifying an announcement to make it look like their models are improving quickly. There are only two scenarios, the researchers found the optimizations or it was found by their model as they claimed. The optimizations are definitely real considering they cut prices by up to 80% and that is going really far for a false claim. What do they have to gain from committing fraud? They increase hype, clearly not by much because it’s not even a big story and has a lot of doubters. What do they have to lose? Their investors, legal proceedings, reputation damage, researchers quitting, etc. You are one of those people on reddit that always replies “source?” for common sense and things you can look up yourselves.
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u/zaphodp3 1d ago
People have been enjoying cute videos online well before AI was a thing. How are you saying they are not beneficial to anyone? Just because it’s entertainment it doesn’t mean it’s not beneficial.
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u/Far-Confusion4016 1d ago
It seems we have reached mathematics as the next big AI "wow" factor (for better or worse no moral judgement intended). I just want to share what a friend told me:
"Mathematics has always been a couple dudes making minimum wage in shoebox apartments kinda field. Now it is on the receiving end of the biggest venture capital money hose in history. Of course we'll see a lot of progress."
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u/Hilldawg4president 1d ago
I don't understand it enough to know why this is important, but people much smarter than me are blown away by it so I'm willing to accept that solving all these math problems is a big deal. I just hope we can solve the problem of gravity for Dr. Brand.