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This is a really weak claim. The evidence they offer is just "someone somewhere says they had a discussion with AI about the topic at some point". They don't e

This is a really weak claim. The evidence they offer is just "someone somewhere says they had a discussion with AI about the topic at some point". They don't even claim to have had a proof, only to have been working on it.

rnijveld 7d ago
I would say there is a significant difference between AI discovering this completely on its own versus AI creating the finishing connecting part by connecting relevant data. Maybe this claim is too strong, but if part of it is true then the claims that OpenAI have made would be too strong as well. To me it would feel more like how LLMs seem to work for me personally: incapable of unique work, but very capable of capturing large amounts of data and connecting the dots.
- madaxe_again 7d ago
  But this is what we do. Nobody ever invented or discovered anything in a vacuum - all discovery is synthesis of existing ideas and concepts applied to a novel domain. We laud Einstein for instance, but his work was a logical extension of Riemann - Riemann had a neat mathematical toy, Einstein described the universe with it - should we say Einstein was incapable of unique work?
  - znnajdla 7d ago
    The difference is that Einstein didn't literally have someone prompting him towards his result.
    - madaxe_again 7d ago
      Uh, he did. Marcel Grossmann. “It was Grossmann who emphasized the importance of a non-Euclidean geometry called Riemannian geometry (also elliptic geometry) to Einstein, which was a necessary step in the development of Einstein's general theory of relativity. Abraham Pais's book on Einstein suggests that Grossmann mentored Einstein in tensor theory as well. Grossmann introduced Einstein to the absolute differential calculus, started by Elwin Bruno Christoffel and fully developed by Gregorio Ricci-Curbastro and Tullio Levi-Civita. Grossmann facilitated Einstein's unique synthesis of mathematical and theoretical physics in what is still today considered the most elegant and powerful theory of gravity: the general theory of relativity.”
      - defmacr0 6d ago
        Yeah and we get a nice list of attributions for who developed which idea, while OpenAI just takes credit for everything its model spits out.
        znnajdla 6d ago
        Correction: OpenAI takes credit for what it's model spits out in response to other people's prompts. That's even worse.
      - znnajdla 6d ago
        Sounds like you just copy-pasted from AI without even understanding what you're talking about. Based on what you're saying, you're claiming this is Grossman's work, not Einstein's. Why don't we rewrite scientific history too based on your copy-pasted AI slop? It's so pointless talking to idiots who don't what they're talking about when they use AI, just because they think AI does everything, that reflects their own experience, not the experience of people who actually do real work. Some people are driven by AI, others drive it. As for those who are driven by it, they don't have sufficient imagination to think otherwise.
        madaxe_again 6d ago
        That’s Wikipedia I copy pasted but sure, you do you. And yes - without Grossmann, Einstein likely would never have posited relativity. Grossmann literally prompted him, saying “look at this, read that, learn this, then try this approach”. Without riemann’s metric tensor, not a fucking chance. And for what it’s worth my PhD is in physics. You?
        calf 6d ago
        So you're just equivocating on terms like "prompt", "synthesis" and the like. Clearly a PhD in physics does not free people from scientistic modes of thinking and poor philosophy. To think this discussion is about Einstein who had a much better mind on these things as well.
  - deleted 6d ago
    [deleted]
- derangedHorse 6d ago
  > capturing large amounts of data and connecting the dots. This is what research is; collecting data and connecting the dots.
  - marcosdumay 6d ago
    It's not collecting other people's data and claiming it's your own.
    - glitchc 6d ago
      The authors were referenced.
    - derangedHorse 6d ago
      Going back to the specific topic at hand, who claimed data as their own when it wasn't? I don't see the interpretation of OpenAI solving the unsolved problem as claiming data that isn't theirs. I also don't recall them mentioning a particular method used in the solution, that was created by someone else, as theirs.
      - suddenlybananas 6d ago
        The Navier-Stokes proof barely cited anyone.
itake 7d ago
The AI only seem to solve the problems that it had human trading data on… If this wasn’t human driven, I’d expect to see other problems within that problem. Space solved not just the ones that it had chat data on.
- dist-epoch 7d ago
  There have been about 6-8 major math breakthroughs claimed by AI. Only for 2 of them there are public accusations about the training data.
  - dgellow 7d ago
    That we know of
  - tecleandor 7d ago
    Only? That doesn't look small to me.
defmacr0 6d ago
A lot of math is extremely specialized, to the extent that only a handful of other experts in some field have any experience with those mathematical ideas, with most of them not even yet present in the published literature. It's really not a stretch to claim that it's pretty dubious when the AI decides to use these highly specialized tools after it has trained on chat logs where these techniques were being discussed.
robotpepi 6d ago
> They don't even claim to have had a proof, only to have been working on it. Yeah, the guys who solved it for Euler and in the hypoviscous case, with the same technique that worked for full Navier--Stokes. They were "just" working on it.

rnijveld 7d ago

I would say there is a significant difference between AI discovering this completely on its own versus AI creating the finishing connecting part by connecting relevant data. Maybe this claim is too strong, but if part of it is true then the claims that OpenAI have made would be too strong as well. To me it would feel more like how LLMs seem to work for me personally: incapable of unique work, but very capable of capturing large amounts of data and connecting the dots.

madaxe_again 7d ago
But this is what we do. Nobody ever invented or discovered anything in a vacuum - all discovery is synthesis of existing ideas and concepts applied to a novel domain. We laud Einstein for instance, but his work was a logical extension of Riemann - Riemann had a neat mathematical toy, Einstein described the universe with it - should we say Einstein was incapable of unique work?
- znnajdla 7d ago
  The difference is that Einstein didn't literally have someone prompting him towards his result.
  - madaxe_again 7d ago
    Uh, he did. Marcel Grossmann. “It was Grossmann who emphasized the importance of a non-Euclidean geometry called Riemannian geometry (also elliptic geometry) to Einstein, which was a necessary step in the development of Einstein's general theory of relativity. Abraham Pais's book on Einstein suggests that Grossmann mentored Einstein in tensor theory as well. Grossmann introduced Einstein to the absolute differential calculus, started by Elwin Bruno Christoffel and fully developed by Gregorio Ricci-Curbastro and Tullio Levi-Civita. Grossmann facilitated Einstein's unique synthesis of mathematical and theoretical physics in what is still today considered the most elegant and powerful theory of gravity: the general theory of relativity.”
    - defmacr0 6d ago
      Yeah and we get a nice list of attributions for who developed which idea, while OpenAI just takes credit for everything its model spits out.
      - znnajdla 6d ago
        Correction: OpenAI takes credit for what it's model spits out in response to other people's prompts. That's even worse.
    - znnajdla 6d ago
      Sounds like you just copy-pasted from AI without even understanding what you're talking about. Based on what you're saying, you're claiming this is Grossman's work, not Einstein's. Why don't we rewrite scientific history too based on your copy-pasted AI slop? It's so pointless talking to idiots who don't what they're talking about when they use AI, just because they think AI does everything, that reflects their own experience, not the experience of people who actually do real work. Some people are driven by AI, others drive it. As for those who are driven by it, they don't have sufficient imagination to think otherwise.
      - madaxe_again 6d ago
        That’s Wikipedia I copy pasted but sure, you do you. And yes - without Grossmann, Einstein likely would never have posited relativity. Grossmann literally prompted him, saying “look at this, read that, learn this, then try this approach”. Without riemann’s metric tensor, not a fucking chance. And for what it’s worth my PhD is in physics. You?
        calf 6d ago
        So you're just equivocating on terms like "prompt", "synthesis" and the like. Clearly a PhD in physics does not free people from scientistic modes of thinking and poor philosophy. To think this discussion is about Einstein who had a much better mind on these things as well.
- deleted 6d ago
  [deleted]
derangedHorse 6d ago
> capturing large amounts of data and connecting the dots. This is what research is; collecting data and connecting the dots.
- marcosdumay 6d ago
  It's not collecting other people's data and claiming it's your own.
  - glitchc 6d ago
    The authors were referenced.
  - derangedHorse 6d ago
    Going back to the specific topic at hand, who claimed data as their own when it wasn't? I don't see the interpretation of OpenAI solving the unsolved problem as claiming data that isn't theirs. I also don't recall them mentioning a particular method used in the solution, that was created by someone else, as theirs.
    - suddenlybananas 6d ago
      The Navier-Stokes proof barely cited anyone.

itake 7d ago

The AI only seem to solve the problems that it had human trading data on… If this wasn’t human driven, I’d expect to see other problems within that problem. Space solved not just the ones that it had chat data on.

dist-epoch 7d ago
There have been about 6-8 major math breakthroughs claimed by AI. Only for 2 of them there are public accusations about the training data.
- dgellow 7d ago
  That we know of
- tecleandor 7d ago
  Only? That doesn't look small to me.

defmacr0 6d ago

A lot of math is extremely specialized, to the extent that only a handful of other experts in some field have any experience with those mathematical ideas, with most of them not even yet present in the published literature. It's really not a stretch to claim that it's pretty dubious when the AI decides to use these highly specialized tools after it has trained on chat logs where these techniques were being discussed.

robotpepi 6d ago

> They don't even claim to have had a proof, only to have been working on it. Yeah, the guys who solved it for Euler and in the hypoviscous case, with the same technique that worked for full Navier--Stokes. They were "just" working on it.