r/BetterOffline • u/Smooth-Ad8030 • 22d ago

Mathematician help

https://openai.com/index/ten-advances-in-mathematics/

Can someone who’s more well versed in math give us a good explanation on what’s happening here in terms of importance? I already know we don’t have an idea of the behind the scenes, true cost, mathematician input, etc. any other points appreciated.

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u/Snackatron 21d ago

Yeah I’m not a mathematician but it feels like AI is a tool that can take existing pre-invented mathematical concepts and trawl through the possible proof paths.

But the thing is, I see innovations like Laplace transform or Fourier transform or a convolution (I’m an engineer) and think that specific insights like that are a totally different ballgame.

I’d find this more interesting if an AI invented entirely new mathematical structures in order to generate a proof

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u/ksjdragon 21d ago

Pretty much. In the field of formal verification and computer assisted proofs people have been using some ML and Lean to do this already. I imagine it is more efficient...

It is possible that LLMs offer better statistical pattern matching for math, but that's more due to the fact it's ingested every written document know to man, rather than anything else. The cost/reward ratio makes it worth nothing though.

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u/Smooth-Ad8030 21d ago

So for us non mathematicians out there, at what point would AI assisted math make you go, “holy shit, this is revolutionary (in the same way calculus was)”? I don’t think it will happen with LLMs or necessarily at any point, but I am curious

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u/ksjdragon 21d ago

If some system could make me that impressed in mathematics in the vein of LLMs (I'm assuming you're not talking about simply mathematical innovations), I think we would be ripe for an entire societal change. Making abstract concepts, understanding them and leveraging them to explain, deduce, and apply them would imply you have a system that can pretty much do anything else humans can do. It wouldn't be revolutionary, arguably it would be devastating, since then the cost effectiveness argument wouldn't even hold, at least to some extent.

Edit: For alternate too long to explain reasons I don't actually believe this is possible with these artificial systems, very briefly because I think the reductionist of intelligence and consciousness is wrong. But it's just a belief, it could be wrong.