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> Dr. Tao said the same thing. Apparently he has since changed his mind.

by cubefox 5d ago

ksoped 5d ago
Did he say so somewhere? I don't think these ideas are contradictory. It's just an pro AI tooling but anti-slop stance.
- cubefox 5d ago
  Where is the difference?
  - SpicyLemonZest 5d ago
    He sees value in mathematicians using AI to carefully study mathematics, develop an understanding of both old and new things, and help others understand the new things. He doesn't see value in scrolling through unsolved problems asking an AI to please solve them. In his view, this is a fundamental confusion about what mathematical research is for. Knocking down unsolved problems without developing the community's understanding of them is like prompting Claude to go through a Jira board, write code for all the open tickets, and then close them without merging or deploying the code.
    - bluecheese452 5d ago
      Isn’t it more like it merges the code without a dev reviewing or understanding it?
      - SpicyLemonZest 5d ago
        No. Merged code can perform actions with effects on the world, even if a human being never saw it. Constructing a giant Lean formalization that nobody understands simply doesn't do anything.
      - dbmikus 5d ago
        Pretty close, but IMO not quite. A math proof in and of itself is useless unless either: (A) it furthers human knowledge (B) it gets used in applied sciences, engineering, etc. If you merge and deploy code, you have released a tool that can be used. If you ship a gibberish math proof, it's not useful unless someone else can understand and deploy it to some other means. Now, it's possible AI could understand and make use of the math proofs, even if we can't, which refutes some of my hair splitting :)
        coderenegade 5d ago
        Not necessarily. That's the best case scenario, but proofs can be intrinsically useful in and of themselves. It's just that for problems of that nature, speculative work is often done ahead of time, e.g. the body of work that already exists assuming the Riemann hypothesis is true.
        dbmikus 4d ago
        That's a good point!
    - glitchc 5d ago
      > He doesn't see value in scrolling through unsolved problems asking an AI to please solve them. Yet that's exactly how the field works. A new grad student is tasked with finding a suitably difficult problem from a list of unsolved problems. The sweet spot is obscure, so that fewer people are working on it, but not too obscure that no one knows about it. It works the same way in theoretical physics and theoretical Comp Sci, and I speak from insider knowledge. The rosy view of mathematicians in the media is largely a product of marketing.
      - SpicyLemonZest 5d ago
        The authors of the declaration agree with you that this is how the field works today. They think that fact causes AI use to produce bad results, and they want to reformulate how the field works so that AI use will produce good results instead.
        glitchc 5d ago
        That sounds shockingly like cognitive dissonance. So what would previously be a good thesis if produced by a student over 4-6 years is suddenly now a bad result because it was produced by AI in a few weeks. One would think mathematicians would not fall into such a simple trap but here we are. I understand the perspective: The journey of a PhD thesis is a learning experience greatly beneficial to the student. Yet that journey is funded by society (esp. for domestic students) and society benefits from the results. The average person benefits when progress is made.
        SpicyLemonZest 4d ago
        No, you're misunderstanding the perspective. They believe the journey is a learning experience greatly beneficial to the field, and that this experience rather than the headline result is where most of the value lies. They don't think mathematical progress consists primarily of finding answers to unresolved questions, so they don't think the average person will benefit if only this narrow kind of progress is made.
  - jrecursive 5d ago
    taste
    - genxy 5d ago
      "I believe I did, Bob" lives rent free, every time someone tells another person to fuck themselves using technology. Thank You!
      - jrecursive 5d ago
        lmao, thank you, i think
        genxy 5d ago
        Please consider making more comics. You have it.
    - darkstarsys 5d ago
      Yes. I find it really interesting to consider what the machines do and will think of as intrinsically interesting to them. Will they develop their own theories of beauty, mathematical and otherwise?

> Dr. Tao said the same thing. Apparently he has since changed his mind.

ksoped 5d ago

Did he say so somewhere? I don't think these ideas are contradictory. It's just an pro AI tooling but anti-slop stance.

cubefox 5d ago
Where is the difference?
- SpicyLemonZest 5d ago
  He sees value in mathematicians using AI to carefully study mathematics, develop an understanding of both old and new things, and help others understand the new things. He doesn't see value in scrolling through unsolved problems asking an AI to please solve them. In his view, this is a fundamental confusion about what mathematical research is for. Knocking down unsolved problems without developing the community's understanding of them is like prompting Claude to go through a Jira board, write code for all the open tickets, and then close them without merging or deploying the code.
  - bluecheese452 5d ago
    Isn’t it more like it merges the code without a dev reviewing or understanding it?
    - SpicyLemonZest 5d ago
      No. Merged code can perform actions with effects on the world, even if a human being never saw it. Constructing a giant Lean formalization that nobody understands simply doesn't do anything.
    - dbmikus 5d ago
      Pretty close, but IMO not quite. A math proof in and of itself is useless unless either: (A) it furthers human knowledge (B) it gets used in applied sciences, engineering, etc. If you merge and deploy code, you have released a tool that can be used. If you ship a gibberish math proof, it's not useful unless someone else can understand and deploy it to some other means. Now, it's possible AI could understand and make use of the math proofs, even if we can't, which refutes some of my hair splitting :)
      - coderenegade 5d ago
        Not necessarily. That's the best case scenario, but proofs can be intrinsically useful in and of themselves. It's just that for problems of that nature, speculative work is often done ahead of time, e.g. the body of work that already exists assuming the Riemann hypothesis is true.
        dbmikus 4d ago
        That's a good point!
  - glitchc 5d ago
    > He doesn't see value in scrolling through unsolved problems asking an AI to please solve them. Yet that's exactly how the field works. A new grad student is tasked with finding a suitably difficult problem from a list of unsolved problems. The sweet spot is obscure, so that fewer people are working on it, but not too obscure that no one knows about it. It works the same way in theoretical physics and theoretical Comp Sci, and I speak from insider knowledge. The rosy view of mathematicians in the media is largely a product of marketing.
    - SpicyLemonZest 5d ago
      The authors of the declaration agree with you that this is how the field works today. They think that fact causes AI use to produce bad results, and they want to reformulate how the field works so that AI use will produce good results instead.
      - glitchc 5d ago
        That sounds shockingly like cognitive dissonance. So what would previously be a good thesis if produced by a student over 4-6 years is suddenly now a bad result because it was produced by AI in a few weeks. One would think mathematicians would not fall into such a simple trap but here we are. I understand the perspective: The journey of a PhD thesis is a learning experience greatly beneficial to the student. Yet that journey is funded by society (esp. for domestic students) and society benefits from the results. The average person benefits when progress is made.
        SpicyLemonZest 4d ago
        No, you're misunderstanding the perspective. They believe the journey is a learning experience greatly beneficial to the field, and that this experience rather than the headline result is where most of the value lies. They don't think mathematical progress consists primarily of finding answers to unresolved questions, so they don't think the average person will benefit if only this narrow kind of progress is made.
- jrecursive 5d ago
  taste
  - genxy 5d ago
    "I believe I did, Bob" lives rent free, every time someone tells another person to fuck themselves using technology. Thank You!
    - jrecursive 5d ago
      lmao, thank you, i think
      - genxy 5d ago
        Please consider making more comics. You have it.
  - darkstarsys 5d ago
    Yes. I find it really interesting to consider what the machines do and will think of as intrinsically interesting to them. Will they develop their own theories of beauty, mathematical and otherwise?