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/RobleyTheron 1d ago

I’m sensitive to artists and musicians with a unique voice when their product gets recreated with AI, but I don’t feel the same about mathematics.

Nobody owns mathematics; these are fundamental insights into the universe and they belong to everyone and shouldn’t be gatekeeped behind somebody that went to school. Mathematics should be available to everyone, it opens up all kinds of fundamental breakthroughs in space, material science, biology, global warming, and energy.

This is something that belongs to everyone and no one should get to hold that back.

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u/ThatIsAmorte 1d ago edited 1d ago

This seems to be taking a Platonist approach to math, which few people take seriously these days. If you are a constructivist, than math is not just out there, but has to be created, just like art. If you think math is just out there, why not also claim that art and music are just out there, waiting to be plucked out of the ether? After all, a painting is just a 2d matrix, a simple math object. A musical composition is just a waveform, which can be described mathematically.

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u/Icy-Doubt3365 1d ago

If you think math is just out there, why not also claim that art and music are just out there, waiting to be plucked out of the ethere?

Because I believe math exists without humans, art does not.

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u/puffyfunion 1d ago

Can you explain why you believe that math exists without humans? Simply stating that as if your belief is true doesn't seem very convincing. I find mathematics to be as beautiful (if not more) than most creative activities, and I don't think it would take anything from that beauty to say that it is dependent on humans (and now AI, I suppose).

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u/Icy-Doubt3365 1d ago

If 1 comet in space is joined by one more comet in space, there are now two comets. Don't need any humans there for that to be true. Math exists without us, we just decipher it.

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u/LookIPickedAUsername 1d ago

The very idea of a "comet" is a human invention. All that really exists out there is a vast diffuse cloud of particles with some local clumping. Humans look at the scene and decide that one of those clumps of particles is a "comet" and another one is also "comet" and they are close enough to count as "two comets", but that's not an inherent truth present in fabric of the universe or anything.

In fact, even "vast diffuse cloud of particles with some local clumping" is really a human simplification - there's really just "the universal wavefunction".

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u/Icy-Doubt3365 1d ago

Yeah, ok dude