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Our AI system don't just do things. They do it because someone asks. A lot of the boom in AI maths results are solving human formulated problems mostly for PR b

by nxpnsv 10d ago

Our AI system don't just do things. They do it because someone asks. A lot of the boom in AI maths results are solving human formulated problems mostly for PR benefit. Once the novelty passes, would Anthropic or OpenAI keep spending? And without mathematicians to ask the right questions and able to appreciate the results, why would AI driven research continue?

busyant 9d ago
> And without mathematicians to ask the right questions Here, I disagree. What makes you think the AI won't be able to ask the right questions without prompting? > and able to appreciate the results, why would AI driven research continue? Here, I think I agree. At some level, there has to be a human in the process that must understand / interpret the results. I gotta say, however, that I'm not certain about my agreement. I'm worried that I'm missing something where the human can be excised from the process entirely.
- nxpnsv 9d ago
  > Here, I disagree. What makes you think the AI won't be able to ask the right questions without prompting? But why would they ask the right questions without prompting? The LLMs have no intrinsic goal to research math problems, it would just be very costly to run queries without a reason to run them... arguably a human in that loop would be a mathematician, but then we do need them after all.
  - busyant 8d ago
    > But why would they ask the right questions without prompting? What if the models are good enough (maybe even now?) so that all you have to say is "come up with a list of interesting problems overlooked by humans in <insert math discipline>. Then work on those proofs." I don't think that's so far fetched. Especially given the news today about NS.
- emp17344 9d ago
  I think we know enough about reinforcement learning to tell that it won’t be able to entirely replace human mathematicians. All of the techniques used by these AI firms are well-studied.
bananaflag 9d ago
First of all, because mathematicians themselves are now asking the right questions to the public models to solve problems.
- nxpnsv 9d ago
  I am not arguing that mathematicians would never use AI systems, they do. I am arguing that if we stop having mathematicians we would stop solving deep mathematical problems as there would be no one to ask the right questions.

by nxpnsv 10d ago

busyant 9d ago

> And without mathematicians to ask the right questions Here, I disagree. What makes you think the AI won't be able to ask the right questions without prompting? > and able to appreciate the results, why would AI driven research continue? Here, I think I agree. At some level, there has to be a human in the process that must understand / interpret the results. I gotta say, however, that I'm not certain about my agreement. I'm worried that I'm missing something where the human can be excised from the process entirely.

nxpnsv 9d ago
> Here, I disagree. What makes you think the AI won't be able to ask the right questions without prompting? But why would they ask the right questions without prompting? The LLMs have no intrinsic goal to research math problems, it would just be very costly to run queries without a reason to run them... arguably a human in that loop would be a mathematician, but then we do need them after all.
- busyant 8d ago
  > But why would they ask the right questions without prompting? What if the models are good enough (maybe even now?) so that all you have to say is "come up with a list of interesting problems overlooked by humans in <insert math discipline>. Then work on those proofs." I don't think that's so far fetched. Especially given the news today about NS.
emp17344 9d ago
I think we know enough about reinforcement learning to tell that it won’t be able to entirely replace human mathematicians. All of the techniques used by these AI firms are well-studied.

bananaflag 9d ago

First of all, because mathematicians themselves are now asking the right questions to the public models to solve problems.

nxpnsv 9d ago
I am not arguing that mathematicians would never use AI systems, they do. I am arguing that if we stop having mathematicians we would stop solving deep mathematical problems as there would be no one to ask the right questions.