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points by paxy 3 days ago | 0 comments

The approach hasn't changed all that much. It's more that the scientific community is slowly starting to accept the inevitable.

[–] stillpointlab 3 days ago

From the article:

> We reached out to external experts and asked them to act as shepherds, organizing groups to understand the new results. They advised three different release strategies

1. They identified relevant experts for each of the discoveries they wanted to release

2. They collaborated with them to determine how to release the results

The effect for the first two (maths, comp sci) was the same because the experts they chose made that decision.

The downside here is actually the third case (physics). Since they only chose 5 scientists (David Gross, Michael Douglas, Arthur Jaffe, Igor Klebanov, and Nikita Nekrasov) and those scientists chose to keep the results private until they finish their own work. Everyone else who might be interested has to wait.

That was my favouritism aside. Scientists working on similar or adjacent problems that are not included in these kinds of private releases might feel they are not getting a fair chance.

This is a process that will change, but it seems they listened to the anger from the math community and made changes that help address the concerns.

[–] clickety_clack 3 days ago

I think, sadly, these fields will collapse further into a tighter in-group. Anyone outside that group will find it increasingly hard to penetrate. Talent won’t get you there anymore.

[–] dingdongditchme 3 days ago

From my experience in research this was already the case 15 years ago (and from older peers, way before). Science has always has "in-groups". I forget the name of some philosopher in the 50's who was the opinion science is just a bunch of fads and it takes the old generation to die before a new idea can really be accepted.

[–] rightnutwingjob 3 days ago

“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” Max Planck 1949

Commonly paraphrased to: The knowledge quest proceeds funeral by funeral.

[–] dingdongditchme 2 days ago

For some reason I doubt Max Planck wrote or said this after his death (1947). The person i meant (maybe it was Kuhn). Either way I think it is too harsh, and many of the scientists I know strive to minimize bias as much as possible.... but I admit it being very hard to break out of conventional thinking and even more so as I age.

[–] mrguyorama 2 days ago

I always find this funny.

Max Planck himself got to watch physics radically change multiple times, through avenues that didn't involve the old guard dying.

[–] NetMageSCW 2 days ago

Kuhn?

[–] dingdongditchme 2 days ago

yea thats the name that was evading me, methinks.

[–] iugtmkbdfil834 2 days ago

But they were already a tight in-group. The difference was that now their combined output can provide additional insights not available before. I don't think that part is a problem. Expertise circles have always existed ( and will likely remain so for a while ).

The issue I am having is how members of the potential in-group is identified.

That said said:

<< Talent won’t get you there anymore.

Talent might not get you to the table, but you can make your own table now if you have useful like minds.

[–] whatshisface 3 days ago

I'm happy to relax for six months, and ask Qwen-8-E2B on my Nintendo 3DS for the solution.

[–] InfinityByTen 3 days ago

The hubris in the framing is astonishing, amusing and sad all at the same time. Many say, that's what HN attracts. Anyone who talks about inevitability except of death in these times is just someone who considers they'd be in the "have" rather the "have not" category.

I still can't see what this means for human understanding and how open would this knowledge be. Who'd ultimately get access to this stuff going forward and what kind of power games would ensue hereon.

[–] pingou 3 days ago

I'm not sure why you think that someone who believes that this is inevitable is just someone who assumes they'd be in the "have" rather the "have not" category.

It seems like you are doing exactly what you accuse the parent commenter of doing. The only difference, perhaps, is that the commenter seems to extrapolate past progress to future progress, while your own assumption is a lot more tenuous.

[–] InfinityByTen 2 days ago

What assumption do you think I make? I'm curious.

I just find it uncertain what lies ahead. I just don't see the sustainability in this. I have degrees in Mechanical Engineering, Applied Mathematics and Scientific Computing. If the "inevitable" is that I do manual labour till we can augment the robots to do that as well, I don't see how me or millions others similar to me have any agency.

Right now, a bunch of stuff is blurted out every month or quarter and people in notable positions are given a chance to "tidy it up". Let's assume that you have even the open weight models at your disposal, the hardware to run any of this in the kind of scale needed, requires capital of Governmental level funding.

Where I see this heading is that there'd be a divide of who controls the resources to produce and who gets delegated to do the menial work. If that's what you mean by my tenous assumption, please do share what you see differently.

[–] pingou 2 days ago

Your assumption was that someone who believes that this is inevitable is just someone who assumes they'd be in the "have" rather the "have not" category. I agree there may be some correlation, but it is less of a sure thing than thinking AI replacing mathematicians is inevitable, in my opinion.

[–] glitchc 2 days ago

It just puts us in the same boat as buggy whip manufacturers and saddlemakers. At least now we know how they truly felt. The rest of society needs to care as much as you cared about saddlemakers before AI. See how that works?

[–] InfinityByTen 2 days ago

It's fascinating how we start bringing in printing press, saddle makers and weavers into these discussions.

But since you bring that up, to recap, the then colonial powers, systemically invalidated the hand weavers of India (where I happen to be from) with the industrial revolution. What followed was famine, mass deaths and cultural collapse. So yes, I truly realize the catastrophe what a group of resource controlling groups can cause on the ones who don't have the chance to have say in how tech moves forward.

Also saddle makers and weavers weren't like a sizable part of world economy. The effects were "far away from home". The "inevitable" is people in tech, all sorts of knowledge workers and possibly even manual labour.

Jobs being invalidated has been happening for a long while. This is not that discussion.

[–] gewetensleegte 2 days ago

> It seems like you are doing exactly what you accuse the parent commenter of doing.

oh please

[–] gewetensleegte 2 days ago

> slowly starting to accept the inevitable.

you're really full of it to assert it's "inevitable"

[–] senordevnyc 2 days ago

If progress continues the way it has, in a couple years the open weight models will be able to do the same thing for hundreds of dollars. Maybe sooner.

How exactly will the mathematics community stop this? And keep it from happening forever?

[–] pfdietz 2 days ago

Yes, you're right, a world where all mathematicians link arms, sing Kumbaya, and agree to not use AI is a much more plausible future. /s