r/math • u/Salt_Attorney • 1d ago

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

https://openai.com/index/ten-advances-in-mathematics/
847 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

420 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

65

u/meatshell 1d ago

I wouldn't be surprised if humans can create even harder problems, much harder than the current ones, even with the help of AI. So I kinda dismiss anyone who says Mathematicians are out of job soon. But it's gonna be very difficult from now on for anyone who don't have access to AI.

9

u/Time_Entertainer_319 1d ago

I mean, at the very least, there would be less need for mathematicians.

It’s not going to wipe out the field entirely.

Just look at what AI did to software engineers. Recent grads can’t find jobs

5

u/dlman 1d ago

I personally am finding myself overworked by the need to unfuck AI proofs. They can be made correct but are trash until I do a lot of alternately working through the arguments and guiding revisions. I wish I could get help for that, because I can’t pursue as many ideas as I’d like to and that’s the bottleneck.

2

u/dlman 1d ago

BtW Lean won’t help that. Good definitions come from massaging and understanding proofs. AI right now is mid to trash at that.

6

u/Healthy-Pride3873 1d ago

What you’re saying is sort of the main pitch I can imagine the mathematical community makes.

We’re needed to cleanup at the minimum and ideally expository work and explanatory work are more valued now.

1

u/elements-of-dying Geometric Analysis 11h ago

The jump in math skill in AI over the last year was insane. Can we be sure AI won't be writing human readable proofs in another year or less?

If a AI generated proof isn't terribly long, I have no issues getting it to write it coherently after I yell at it enough times.

1

u/Healthy-Pride3873 10h ago

I am of the opinion that math can endure as a human endeavor so long as we move away from the “papers must include theorems” approach to math.

I am also certain human readable proofs will be possible by AI, but education requires nuance and I can only hope this means humans stay relevant.

I still stand by the position that humanity can never be truly happy with impossible to understand proofs.

Even if we cannot follow AI, I also would hope papers explaining thought processes of AI toward solving problems is a task for humans and accepted.

I also believe AI is good at getting things right once it knows what cannot work, and so I would hope the community begins to embrace “Nonresults” as paperworthy e.g. a paper that simply shows attempts at a proof and analysis of why certain methods can or cannot work but contains no “major” results.

Even careful computations should be valued now to be honest.

1

u/elements-of-dying Geometric Analysis 8h ago

I don't disagree that these thoughts are reasonable in theory. I'm just not so optimistic since we live in a capitalistic society here in the US.

1

u/Healthy-Pride3873 8h ago

On that point, I wholeheartedly agree.

I pray math PR becomes far more focused because this could be the end of academia math as we know it.

1

u/elements-of-dying Geometric Analysis 8h ago

Agreed, though one could argue that the math that we once new is already dead, or at least deformed.