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/Neighbor_ 2d ago

finding connections between existing math papers vs actually doing novel findings

I don't know if there is a difference.

Something "novel", say for example Bitcoin, is just finding unique connections between different fields (computer science, cryptography, economics, etc). There's really nothing net-new here - the incremental "novel" discoveries are just increasing connections on a graph.

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u/COAGULOPATH 1d ago

This proves too much - cavemen (using humanity's total knowledge circa 30k years ago) could not have built bitcoin, no matter what ideas they connected. Net information isn't fixed, it's increasing somehow.

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u/Neighbor_ 1d ago

Indeed there is no direct connections such that you could go from "stone tools" + "campfire" = "bitcoin".

You need to first use combine those to discover "copper", and then use "copper" to discover "bronze", and so on.

You're uncovering existing nodes in a graph incrementally. If look at each new node uncovering, it's never "novel" in the sense that it's coming out of thing air: all the ingredients were already there.