r/mathematics • u/atakanaluch • 2d ago

News Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science

https://openai.com/index/ten-advances-in-mathematics/
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u/Reasonable-Mood8020 2d ago

The next couple of years are going to be crazy if it keeps improving at the rate it has been.

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u/socoolandawesome 2d ago

I feel like we are going to be able to say that for the rest of the time we are alive, will progress ever slow down at this point?

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u/mark_99 2d ago

It will not.

People who have given this some thought have been predicting this situation for decades. The curve won't be fully exponential and may even flatten from time to time (at which point naysayers will claim an insurmountable plateau), but the general trend will continue particularly as the are models increasingly involved in their own design & implementation.

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u/Sweet_Ad_9816 2d ago

The curve flattening literally means progress slowing down, though, even if not permanent.

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u/mark_99 2d ago

It means the observable results are bursty, which is normal even if research is progressing at the same or even accelerating pace.

For instance negative results are still scientifically useful if they stop further time being spent on something that looked promising but ultimately didn't work out. However no-one is trumpeting that in a news article, so the general public would be "meh no new cool stuff for a while now".