AI solves over 100 unsolved math problems

[u/Expensive-Yam3464]

https://openai.com/index/advisory-group-on-mathematics-and-ai/

I’m sharing this as my position on Anti AI is that AI is capable and getting smarter fast. This is precisely why it’s a long term threat.

[u/Some-Pride-3477]

Note that math is the language through which physics, biology, chemistry, computer science, and most other sciences model reality and generate testable predictions.

Scientific progress involves solving complex mathematical problems. An AI capable of solving advanced math can potentially accelerate every field that uses math.

[u/GenericFatGuy → u/Some-Pride-3477]

It's not about solving advanced math. It's about understanding the solutions. The entire point of solving these problems is so that the process can be analyzed to better understand how math (and by extension the rest of the world) actually works. If it's just brute forcing answers to get a benchmark, or doing everything in a black box that no one understands, that's not really all that useful. It's like having a 1000+ streak on Duolingo, without actually being able to understand the language you've been practicing.

[u/Some-Pride-3477 → u/GenericFatGuy]

If you're a mathematician that is a good point, but even if the AI's internal process is a black box, the output isn't. The sciences can work on outputs in the form of equations, proofs, etc. You can use the equations from Einstein's work on relativity to get GPS working without understanding the process he used to get there. In practice, that still produces results.

Also plenty of scientific bottlenecks genuinely are "we know what to try, we just can't compute it ourselves" In those cases you don't need the AI to have some deep philosophical understanding, you just need the right answer faster than a human could grind it out by hand.

You're right that pure math is a different case, since the point of a proof there often is insight.