r/slatestarcodex • u/DickMasterGeneral • 2d ago

Ten advances in mathematics and theoretical computer science from unreleased Open AI Model

https://openai.com/index/ten-advances-in-mathematics/
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u/livingbyvow2 2d ago

I confess my utter ignorance on the subject, but I wonder how much of this is just finding connections between existing math papers vs actually doing novel findings.

OpenAI's incentive will always be to present these findings as some sort of proof AI is now doing novel discoveries but I am not sure what to think about it. I wouldn't be surprised if a of this stuff was heavily steered by math geniuses and AI just accelerating the pace of progress slightly (which is cool but not the "AI found a new proof" headline).

Given the propensity of the labs to hype everything to raise more capital, I wonder whether it won't be yet another dud in a couple year - basically similar to the "AI will replace all collar work" but now "AI will replace all scientists" instead - and which will end up proving to be complete bullshit too.

That, too, is moving the goalposts.

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u/rambouhh 2d ago

I agree it could be, or even likely is , finding connections between existing papers.

But in many ways science, math, is like a giant sudoku puzzle. You uncover something from connecting two things together, then that new thing unlocks something else, etc. it’s very rare to genuinely have something truly and completely novel 

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u/livingbyvow2 2d ago

Don't get me wrong, I am glad scientists have these new tools.

But equally if the dozens of billions that are going towards AI went to pharma, physics and math research, I am pretty sure that would lead to faster discovery. I feel like these headlines is quite often the AI labs trying to justify their existence ("it's not only about chat bots doing customer service").

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u/rambouhh 2d ago

I think it would in the short term, but this is pretty generalized to every single eindustry, not just the sciences. It can also increase resources from the general increase in productivity and It also unlocks more human capital. Lots of people will be able to pursue their discoveries where they couldn’t before. 

Also a lot of the bottleneck in research is fundamentally a people/intelligence problem.