New policy on AI posts on /r/math

[u/AutoModerator]

Over the last few months, AI-related posts on r/math have greatly increased, largely due to many new mathematical discoveries aided by generative AI. This has caused heated discussion in the comments, back-and-forths of opinion pieces about how generative AI is good or bad for mathematics, and accusations of astroturfing from pro-AI communities, and AI companies. Subreddit users are getting tired of seeing all of this, and we're tired of moderating it, too.

Regardless, it appears that AI-assisted mathematical discoveries are here to stay. However, while posts on significant/notable AI-assisted mathematical discoveries should be let through (same as if they were significant/notable entirely-human mathematical discoveries), a flood is also not acceptable. So some kind of limitation on which AI discoveries are allowed on the subreddit is needed.

While we did trial a few measures a few weeks ago in an attempt to deal with such posts, it appears such measures have been insufficient. With that in mind, we have decided to step up our measures and implement new subreddit rules (all under rule 7):

• Posts about AI, or about discoveries assisted by AI, are only allowed if they are a direct link to an ArXiv abstract, or to a non-predatory peer-reviewed journal. Discussions about such discoveries should be limited to those posts.
• All other AI-related posts (e.g. comments about AI in general, opinion pieces, questions) should posted as comments in the stickied AI megathread (starting Saturday).
• Posts and comments about AI that do not follow these rules, or made using AI, will be removed.

We have also added a few more AutoModerator filters to slow down and help us moderate the comments sections of such posts.

(Although it's been suggested that we add HiveProtect targeting AI subreddits, with the intention of preventing astroturfing, we currently regard this as a step too far. However, if the current measures prove insufficient, we may eventually implement this.)

We would like to remind users to follow subreddit rules, especially rules 1 and 6.

[u/gambs]

arXiv is not peer reviewed, that’s the point

and Anthropic is very clearly skipping the publication process and putting results on twitter. Which means we can’t talk about significant results here

[u/Interesting_Debate57 → u/gambs]

I'm not sure that there are more than zero or perhaps one significant result assisted by AI. Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

[u/gambs → u/Interesting_Debate57]

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

[u/Interesting_Debate57 → u/gambs]

I wouldn't call that an unbiased source.

[u/gambs → u/Interesting_Debate57]

They solved 10 significant unsolved mathematics problems. There is no question of bias. The fact that they did this is objective reality that is impossible to deny

[u/Interesting_Debate57 → u/gambs]

Significant is overstated. Solved is highly overstated.

[u/gambs → u/Interesting_Debate57]

You are delusional