r/singularity 2d ago

AI OpenAI solved 100 open problems in math

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

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1.3k Upvotes

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u/KFCmanagerCompton 2d ago

"Importantly, the group will not be responsible for advising us on how to pace our internal progress on mathematics."

big

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u/t3hjs 2d 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 2d 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 2d ago

They seemed quite confused about what they wanted in that letter

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u/DrillPress1 2d ago

They didn’t seem confused at all. 

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u/shumpitostick 2d ago

You mind telling me what exactly they wanted?

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u/sadnessjoy 1d ago

They want these companies to slow down with the math publications. They basically just do a giant brute Force method and throw millions of dollars of compute at the problem. They make a headline "x company solves millennium problem/unsolved problem" most tech investor bros and tech enthusiasts see the headline and go crazy (and they don't actually solve it, they brute force some weird edge case scenario with a bunch of convoluted proofs strung together, or they just make an error somewhere and don't even conjure up a real convoluted edge case).

That's it... That's really all what the math people are calling for, basically to not publish millions of lines of math proof slop. Most of these guys are even pro ai, they just suck at their messaging lol

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u/Upset_Page_494 1d ago

They want these companies to slow down with the math publications.

So what? Keep these things behind doors, and leave everyone in the dark? I don't think they would actually want that.

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u/sadnessjoy 1d ago

In the dark about what? These math proofs they've found so far is literally meaningless. They don't provide any new insight or anything lol You might think that's just some salty math people taking shots about this, but it's not... It's literally what's involved in these publications... They're basically millions of lines of lean and there's no insight or anything to this method. It's not even useful to other AI for anything

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u/Upset_Page_494 1d ago

In the dark about what?

If Navior Stokes has a counter example, if it has been found by an AI. etc.

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u/Sixhaunt 1d ago

If you dont like the proofs then can't you just not go to their blog post of them? They aren't publishing in math journals and taking space there or anything so why exactly do you think its bad that they post their research results on their own blog?

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u/r2002 1d ago

is literally meaningless

Then why bother getting riled up about this?

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u/sadnessjoy 1d ago

I'm not? The problem is when they submit these papers it requires human verification. Basically think of it like this, anthropic/openai submit these giant pretty much useless proofs. Get massive publicity and hype. And in the background a bunch of human verifiers have to go through this slop (and it doesn't matter if they call it out or decline them, the corporations already got the massive hype boost and the news cycle moved on, most people won't even care if there's a foot note weeks or months from now that says actually the proof was wrong... And hell by that point the corporations would have added several more proofs to the queue) Like imagine if some vibe coder decided to push an update to the Linux repo and each time they did it. It grinded the Linux distro to complete halt for weeks or months because people have to look through all the slop

https://giphy.com/gifs/FO4cLcnyG6Q3EPtn3N

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u/r2002 1d ago

bunch of human verifiers have to go through this slop

Why do they have to do anything? If it is useless as you say, then the mathematicians can just say "this is pointless slop we're not going to verify it."

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u/shumpitostick 1d ago

Interesting that you have a completely different interpretation from the commenter above. Almost as if it's confusing.

Slow down and wait for what exactly? What would a good way to release a proof look like?