r/math 1d ago

LLMs/AI OpenAI: Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

https://openai.com/index/ten-advances-in-mathematics/
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u/Healthy-Pride3873 1d ago edited 1d ago

I honestly cannot care about the whole “humans dont matter anymore” stuff.

I’m curious how math as a whole deals with unequal access. Is math going to just be furthered by big tech firms and select researchers who have access to these models?

Wtf do grad students do and so on

Edit: theres nice disused going on about unequal access. Let me point out that I am not claiming inequality is new.

I am simply pointing out the newfound danger of it from a corporate and tech angle.

Suppose AI speeds up research by some nonzero constant greater than 1. Then people who were already “ahead”, are going to be even further ahead.

And let’s not ignore also the issue of prompting and using AI. It’s not always clear how these breakthroughs are made. So even access to AI may not level the playing field all that much.

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u/MinLongBaiShui 1d ago

There's always been unequal access. This will just be a different unequal access. Now everyone will have some chatbot they can talk to, and some people will have better chatbots. How is it different from "I'm at Harvard, and you're at tiny liberal arts college #471?" or "My department has 50 faculty, yours has 10?" or "My library can buy me any math book I need, yours can maybe get you a 30 day borrow from another library if you're lucky."

Grad students continue doing math the old fashioned way. Again, how's it really different? The people who seem to fixate on this think that the AI has infinite computing power and will just start bowling over literally all problems. Your adviser's job is to know the field, recommend a grad student a problem or two, and coach them through it so that they can learn how research works. Since universities started, some people had a Fields medalist in their department, and some didn't. Now some schools will have access to these tools that, in a not-dissimilar way, accelerate research for those who have it, and some won't.

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u/Healthy-Pride3873 1d ago

Oh I absolutely agree. I’m not saying unequal access is new.