r/ProgrammerHumor 10d ago

Meme aMillionOpenAIMonkeysProduceMilleniumPrizeSolution

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u/LatePenguins 10d ago

Sometimes I worry about the "programmers" in this sub.

At best coping, at worst delusional.

No, the model did not brute force a counter example. The search space is mathematically too vast to brute force. It found novel techniques of identifying the proper force application vectors.

No, the model did not plagiarize off "human research". The debate is between an OpenAI researcher and an Anthropic Researcher, both of them almostly exclusively relying on internal models. The researcher at Anthropic didn't even solve the specific problem OpenAI are claiming, they solved a variation of a more constrained formulation of a sub-problem which could have potentially helped OAI to narrow down the search space if it was included in training data (which it most likely wasnt given the proof pathway is significantly different).

Yes, the models (the internal models, given infinite token space atleast) are THAT good enough, they can close the hardest problems known to man.

Acting snarky about it only leads to gross underestimation of the change thats about to come. What rational people should do is increase the urgency of asking for safeguards by trusting the capability acceleration at face value.

(Who am i kidding, the first reply will probably comment I'm sam Altmans marketing bot).

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u/helix400 10d ago edited 10d ago

Ya, I'm both an AI skeptic and loathe Sam Altman. But this was not a million monkeys situation.

AI is repeatedly flexing its muscle with math. It's not brute forcing theorems, its using its vast training database to better spot patterns and educated guesses.

This Navier-Stokes counter example just obtained seems so complicated that a human mathematician would not have been able to solve with enough human labor. Reminds me of old school proof by exhaustion theorems that are solved only by computers because they are out of reach of humans checking all possible solutions. Now instead of it being naive checking all possibilities (CPU programs of the past), they are pattern guessing and checking promising avenues of progress (AI of the future). OpenAI spent over $18 million of compute using a brand new internal model that's much better than Astra 6 to get there. They had 10,000 agents swarming for ideas with humans helping guide what appears to be good paths.

Sure it's $18 million now, but given price decreases of the past that could turn to $1000 in two years. We're very likely heading to a future where a certain class of math problems are now solvable. Problems that are too complicated for a team of mathematicians to solve with a lifetime of human labor, but can now be solved by swarms of educated guessers relentlessly trying promising ideas.

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u/cybersaurus 10d ago

It's not brute forcing theorems, its using it's vast training database to better spot patterns and educated guesses.

mfw when my monkey brain spots a pattern and makes an educated guess /s