Terence Tao Responds to the OpenAI Math Drop

adrianN

I wonder how we could formalize the notion of „interesting“ problems in a way that would allow us to automatically generate new interesting questions from the existing corpus of mathematics.

cs_throwaway

Let us know when it is clear that UCLA does not hire the candidate with the most top-tier journal papers. It’s more likely that instead of spending a 100K/year direct grant on two PhD students, PIs will hire 1 and have the student spend 50K on AI.

vasco

He is right if model intelligence stalls. If model intelligence continues to improve soon there's no need for the prompter to understand anything or for any workshop as a mathematician will just be able to ask the model to explain how the proof works and models will do a good job at walking them through it step by step. There will be no gap in understanding. Now there is because the models are discovering things at the edge of what they can do and so suck at explaining it. There's nothing particularly special about a newly solved problem in terms of learning it. If we accept AI can explain all of existing math nicely, why shouldn't it be able to explain new proofs?

ChrisArchitect

Related: AHM Statement on OpenAI's October 6 Release of Mathematical Documents https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50000421 / https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49999159

teekert

I think we can say by now that we should not listen to the early nay-sayers and just wait a bit. With every trend, not just "AI". They still have some points (the ethics and environment etc), but the we don't hear from the Stochastic Parrot folks anymore. Of course it's good to have the discussion... So maybe, we listen to the nay-sayers, but defer judgement on the matter... That's wisdom. Edit, to be clear, I consider Tao to be the wisdom provider, not an early nay-sayer!

underdeserver

Even when a problem got solved, there has always been value in publishing simpler proofs and corollaries that give better intuition into the broader field. If I understand Tao correctly, he's saying that's going to have to be the focus going forward. I just default to thinking the models are going to be much better than us at that, too.

yedhukrishnan

This is a distilled version of what people say about the tech industry in the past year or so. Replace math with any field, and the statement is still relevant.

shubhamjain

A very balanced perspective, and the concerns he raises are reasonable. He acknowledges that AI is going to transform mathematics, but simply dumping proofs on the math community and expecting others to do the grunt work of verifying, refining, and expanding on them is hardly a productive way to advance the field. There seems to be more interest in hitting some arbitrary benchmark (we proved X unsolved problems) than in genuinely contributing to mathematics. But what else is to be expected? It's become a maniacal race with too much money. Too much effort is being invested in proving that the exponential curve is still holding.

doctoboggan

It's been very interesting watching Tao's evolution on his thinking on LLMs. Of course the LLMs have themselves evolved so that shouldn't come as a surprise. The job of professional mathematician might be the first to be completely eliminated by LLMs, save for those who can make money from a patron. I am hoping they are able to figure something out to save their profession, as other professions could use it as a blueprint as AI comes for them next.

MrOrelliOReilly

Does this response properly anticipate how math will change further with the next N model generations? Exposition and exploration may fall well within the capabilities of future models.

AlexAplin

>the mere knowledge that a solution exists "contaminates" efforts by both humans and AI to find alternate routes to the problem that reveal additional insights This really expresses the heartburn you see across all fields, not exclusive to careerism. I certainly have friends in decomp and fan translation spaces that have been demotivated by the current rash of efforts happening there. The rush to be "first" has always been over-celebrated, but it would be nice to believe there's a way to get beyond that thinking.

bonoboTP

I imagine doctors will also clutch their pearls when Ai starts curing disease. "But curing disease was never the point! These arbitrary dumps of AI cures for cancers is unsustainable! Who will think of the doctors and who will build their communities further? From now on progress in medicine must be redefined as what makes doctors thrive, not what generates cures!"

lifeisloving

The same could be said of Software. Instead of giving up on creating novel projects and instead just taking other peoples ideas and porting them to Rust, we could be embracing AI to push software and computers farther. Im not sure how that will work, but im convinced the current paradigm of just pushing agents into codebases for not much reason other than you can is going to make building software incredibly boring and push creative people away from the field and stagnate progress. My prediction is software gets boring and building hardware projects will be the new frontier for creative engineers looking to push computing further. Which is probably a good thing.