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points by bko 2 days ago | 0 comments

I don't know what "the credit" means. They're spending tens of millions to solve these problems, hire academics at insane salaries and give out millions in research credits. You care about language on some press release?

Academics are paid tiny sums at post doc and professor levels. Oai comes along paying millions to these people and giving them the tools and support to actually solve problems.

[–] fwlr 2 days ago

Society paid academics just barely enough to survive and do math (and probably we optimized that amount a little bit too far toward minimal), so you had to really love math and not really love anything else to do it.

OAI pays lots of money for doing math, and doing math makes them lots of money (or they believe it does), so your love for math has to be upper-bounded by your love for money. Loving math helps, of course, but not loving math is okay too, because you can substitute that with your love of money. But when money and math conflict, your love of money has to win.

I contend that:

1) Within the process of doing math, the second type is better in some metrics (eg speed) while the first is better in others (eg readability of prose);

2) On the first order outcomes of doing math, the first type is better (eg elegance of mathematical objects)

3) On the second and higher order outcomes of doing math, the first type is better (eg respect society has for the field, sustainability on long timescales)

How to weigh each order when choosing a winner is a decision each civilisation gets to make.

This comment box is sadly too small to contain an argument for why higher-order should matter more, but it suffices to say here that only caring about higher-order outcomes is “having your head in the clouds, hoping to catch a glimpse of Heaven” and only caring about lower-order outcomes is “making a deal with the devil, your soul ends up in Hell”.

[–] jatora 2 days ago

A whole lotta words just to say you are coping.

[–] jonathanstrange 2 days ago

IMHO it makes no sense to admit you don't know what "the credit" means and continue to participate in this discussion. You don't seem to understand the culture and motivation of professors and postdocs doing research level mathematics.

[–] bko 2 days ago

So explain it. Is it press releases?

This technology lets you do research a lot more efficiently. It's all there. If you're interested is solving interesting problems there has never been a better time. If you're interested in being the first to solve outstanding problems from decades ago, maybe not as good, but then again let's be honest, chances are you weren't going to solve them anyway.

[–] jonathanstrange 2 days ago

"Let's be honest": Why would I care that you care so much that these problems were solved automatically when you yourself don't even seem to be aiming at a better understanding and talk in disrespectful ways about the people who seek a deeper understanding? You could read a book about the history of mathematics, for example Roger Penrose's Road to Reality.

[–] pluc 2 days ago

> Academics are paid tiny sums at post doc and professor levels. Oai comes along paying millions to these people and giving them the tools and support to actually solve problems.

I mean if I was one of them I'd be super pissed that a piece of silicon got more funding than I did and of course it's gonna have better results. I can't steal my peers' research but AI can.

[–] bko 2 days ago

You think if researchers in math got tens of millions they would have solved these problems?

What's your mental model here?

Again, oai is giving mathematicians millions, they're hiring them to work on purely academic problems. Funding has increased considerably.

What is the problem?

[–] pluc 2 days ago

The problem is where this is going. We've gone from thousands of researchers to one company. I don't care how much better the results are, it is a terrible idea to centralize knowledge evolution.

[–] bko 2 days ago

So you believe math is a jobs program. We do more work, don't need as many mathematicians, although there doesn't necessarily mean fewer as they're now a lot more productive.

Knowledge and discovery isn't the point, it's that this particular group of people are in sole control of the pace and what gets discovered

[–] motbus3 2 days ago

You can't say they are spending 10s of millions on that. First, you cannot calculate their usage cost by what they charge you. Second, if the prompts from the math researches were not there they would not be able to solve the problem, and they know it, and that's why they are trying to silence people or make noise enough so people don't realise what they are doing

Your comment about academics is not based. If you take the time to read any of the papers they published you will see most if not all are pure garbage nonsense.

Read Terence Tao about ai, or anything about the "supposedly" improvement in the FFT. Their claims are all nothing burgers.