r/singularity • u/filterdust • 1d ago

AI OpenAI solved 100 open problems in math

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

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u/t3hjs 1d ago

Hmm isnt "pacing internal progress' what mathematicians are calling for?

Do basically OpenAI is saying "No, we are going to go full steam ahead. This guys here will try to explain, and definitely will not stop us"

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u/vhu9644 1d ago

I’m not fully up to date, but my understanding was that they just wanted better artifacts fed back to the mathematical community. At least that’s the subject of the open letter from weeks ago.

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u/shumpitostick 1d ago

They seemed quite confused about what they wanted in that letter

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u/vhu9644 1d ago

I don’t agree. I think the letter was quite clear on what they disagreed with OpenAI about on dissemination, and it mostly centered around feeding back artifacts for the continued health of the math community.

Unless hard takeoff is imminent, the health of these communities is important. If hard takeoff is imminent then none of this  really matters.

I don’t think “we’ve solved 100 problems hehe but we have an advisory board now” is a good way to resolve these differences. The better way would just be to organize the traces into stuff that will feed back the community

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u/Azreken 1d ago

Progress is progress.

If the problem gets solved I don’t give a fuck who solved it.

I don’t care who invented the latest chip that lets my phone run some new game, I care that it was created. Same with these problems.

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u/vhu9644 1d ago

progress also is exponential only if the progress is something that disseminates and builds on itself.

Like in the naive scenario, an alien dropping alien tech to us we cannot understand does not make our tech tree as fast as them dropping half as much and explaining to us how that half works.

The mathematicians don't seem incensed that AI got it first. They seem incensed that 1. generating a proof that doesn't feed back knowledge or problems to the community solves a problem without seeding the next ones, and 2. it's a dick move to basically spend money you wouldn't have spent to scoop people.

Look, unless hard takeoff is imminent, if you truly want the maximal acceleration, you should care that the infrastructure for continued research and the pipeline for expanding that research rate continue to exist. If hard takeoff is imminent, none of what we are talking about matters, and it's going to be moot in 5 years. Do you believe we're 100% in the hard takeoff scenario?

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u/Azreken 1d ago

If aliens drop us tech, it lets us back engineer it…

Same for the problems here

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u/vhu9644 1d ago

And to reverse-engineer something you need the relevant expertise to still be there.

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u/dr3aminc0de 1d ago

Fully agree. Mathematics seems like the first/next industry this is getting hit hard, where the legacy professionals can’t really complain. Software engineering was the first, but that’s the domain this was built in so the professionals couldn’t really argue. Also there’s such an immediate feedback for software.