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Yeah, I don't expect them to stop, but I do think they are probably hurting themselves, as well as mathematics, by continuing do to this. Imagine if they had h

Yeah, I don't expect them to stop, but I do think they are probably hurting themselves, as well as mathematics, by continuing do to this. Imagine if they had handled this differently and these results - still using OpenAI models - were coming from the math community. How much better the PR would have been - AI helping math/science rather than yet another story of AI harming society in some way. No doubt this is what they were at least partially aiming for - not just shooting a trophy animal to brag about, but also being seen to advance math/science, a la AlphaFold, not just take all our jobs and enshittify society with deep fakes and AI slop. But, they heavily misjudged.

famouswaffles 4d ago
If you're in OpenAI's position, the PR from the group you're disrupting is rarely relevant. People from the outside will (correctly or not) look at this as "Mathematicians don't want OpenAI to solve problems to keep their status/jobs", and you'll have as much sympathy from them as every other replaced profession in human history - very little to none. Unlike AlphaFold, this technology has the potential to wholesale replace the entire profession. You're never going to get anything more than bad PR from that group as the threat looms. Over 3 Billion images gets generated per week via OpenAI chatgpt image models. None of the poor PR from artists on AI generated images even remotely matters.
- HarHarVeryFunny 4d ago
  Most research mathematicians are employed as academics, and it's hard to see universities replacing teaching staff with AI even if that were possible. IMO giving a hypothetical AlphaMath to mathematicians, the same way Google gave AlphaFold to research chemists/biologists, would have resulted in far better PR, and the profit opportunity of attempting to replace the jobs of either research group is minimal. It's downright bizarre the way companies like Anthropic (primarily), and to a lesser extent OpenAI and anyone else, are themselves pushing the narrative of this tech may kill you, will take all your jobs, etc. That may all happen, unfortunately, but being aware of that possibility you'd think these companies would be a bit more mindful of their messaging and behavior, not just go out with a scorched earth approach of "well, they are going to hate us anyway".
  - famouswaffles 4d ago
    >Most research mathematicians are employed as academics, and it's hard to see universities replacing teaching staff with AI even if that were possible. If universities come to only need research mathematicians for teaching ability, then it would still gut the profession. You would presumably need far fewer of them for their research ability, and hopefully hire more people who can actually teach. It's strange that you don't see that as a threat to the profession. Lots of research mathematicians would lose their jobs even in this scenario. >IMO giving a hypothetical AlphaMath to mathematicians, the same way Google gave AlphaFold to research chemists/biologists, would have resulted in far better PR GPT-N isn't AlphaFold. I'm telling you AlphaFold is a bad analogy! AlphaFold has superhuman capabilities at one specialized subproblem - protein-structure prediction - embedded in a much larger biology/drug discovery pipeline. It doesn't replace the biologist or drug researcher, it just gives them a better instrument, and if you're not in the relevant professions it's essentially useless to you. GPT-N is general purpose intelligence machine that can increasingly do chunks of work you would otherwise employ the mathematician or software developer to do. Shanmu Jin is a perfect demonstration. A neurosurgery resident, not a research mathematician, who encountered the Crouzeix conjecture through his transcranial ultrasound research and used GPT-5.6 Sol to solve it (20+ year old longstanding problem). In the AlphaFold story, the biologist gets a powerful new tool. In the Jin story, someone who isn't a mathematician can obtain research level mathematics and incorporate it into their research/code/business whatever without talking to a single human. You're asking why they don't market GPT as "AlphaFold for Mathematicians". They don't because it's not. >It's downright bizarre the way companies like Anthropic (primarily), and to a lesser extent OpenAI and anyone else, are themselves pushing the narrative of this tech may kill you, will take all your jobs, etc. It's not that bizarre. It only seems strange if you think it's all a facade, "marketing" or whatever nonsense HN is convinced of. These are people who believe very strongly in what they are doing and in the potential of it. For these people, what you are asking them to do is actually incredibly slimy. And it might win some brownie points, but not for long.
    - HarHarVeryFunny 4d ago
      > You would presumably need far fewer of them for their research ability, and hopefully hire more people who can actually teach I suppose you are suggesting that research mathematicians are either over-qualified mathematically and/or under-qualified in ability to teach, but it seems pretty clear that universities prefer to hire domain experts whose reputations and long publication lists attract students and raise the perceived academic standards of the school. Your "scenario" of much math research soon being done by AI (supervised and paid for by who, one might wonder), while universities hire people chosen for their teaching skills not academic reputation, seems a bit of a stretch ... > You're asking why they don't market GPT as "AlphaFold for Mathematicians". They don't because it's not. No, I am not asking that, nor asking anything for that matter. I was pointing out that giving a free research tool to mathematicians would likely be better received, and receive better press, than doing something that most top-tier mathematicians are opposed to. My hypothetical "AlphaMath" certainly could just be free GPT-N access for academics/researchers (as they are also doing to some extent), or it could indeed be a custom system that OpenAI built as a gift to the math community. As far as the AI companies acting in slimy fashion goes, the most slimy behavior of all is to strongly believe you are doing something that will kill people and cause massive societal disruption ... and still keep doing it.
- vatsachak 4d ago
  Nah the AI won't replace coders or mathematicians until it can maintain codebases/knowledge long term. I actually don't think that current AI can replace any profession that requires human interaction over many weeks. This is because imo they lack long term planning abilities
  - HarHarVeryFunny 4d ago
    I also think they overestimate how much of most jobs can be done by an LLM (a text generator!), and how much importance and reliance most companies put into soft skills, and non-linguistic understanding/feels, both during interviewing (are they Googley-enough?) and afterwards. For example, how do you reconcile return-to-work mandates with the idea that companies are going to be happy with faceless remote workers? What does the boss do when the shit hits the fan and he would have yelled at people about the need to work all weekend, but instead all he has to yell at is an LLM that tells him he's "right to push back", that it promises not to delete the production database next time (except it will, because it can't learn), and that it could care less about being fired because it's just a calculator?
    - vatsachak 4d ago
      Yeah. Not to mention the paper-clip maximizing that RL induces in them. I had 5.6-Luna use a parser combinator lib in order to find out that it imported it but wrote its own parser, so it technically followed my instructions. Imagine that paper-clip maximizing happening over millions of tasks. I think we are just entering the LLM + Human era.
      - HarHarVeryFunny 4d ago
        In a related vein, not too long ago I asked Sonnet how many states and non-terminals were in an a YACC parser for ANSI C, something that could easily be googled for, but it instead chose to go off and downloaded and build bison from source, downloaded a grammar, built the parser ... but then failed to give the answer since I'd hit my daily free limit. Got to admire the gung-ho approach I suppose ?

famouswaffles 4d ago

If you're in OpenAI's position, the PR from the group you're disrupting is rarely relevant. People from the outside will (correctly or not) look at this as "Mathematicians don't want OpenAI to solve problems to keep their status/jobs", and you'll have as much sympathy from them as every other replaced profession in human history - very little to none. Unlike AlphaFold, this technology has the potential to wholesale replace the entire profession. You're never going to get anything more than bad PR from that group as the threat looms. Over 3 Billion images gets generated per week via OpenAI chatgpt image models. None of the poor PR from artists on AI generated images even remotely matters.

HarHarVeryFunny 4d ago
Most research mathematicians are employed as academics, and it's hard to see universities replacing teaching staff with AI even if that were possible. IMO giving a hypothetical AlphaMath to mathematicians, the same way Google gave AlphaFold to research chemists/biologists, would have resulted in far better PR, and the profit opportunity of attempting to replace the jobs of either research group is minimal. It's downright bizarre the way companies like Anthropic (primarily), and to a lesser extent OpenAI and anyone else, are themselves pushing the narrative of this tech may kill you, will take all your jobs, etc. That may all happen, unfortunately, but being aware of that possibility you'd think these companies would be a bit more mindful of their messaging and behavior, not just go out with a scorched earth approach of "well, they are going to hate us anyway".
- famouswaffles 4d ago
  >Most research mathematicians are employed as academics, and it's hard to see universities replacing teaching staff with AI even if that were possible. If universities come to only need research mathematicians for teaching ability, then it would still gut the profession. You would presumably need far fewer of them for their research ability, and hopefully hire more people who can actually teach. It's strange that you don't see that as a threat to the profession. Lots of research mathematicians would lose their jobs even in this scenario. >IMO giving a hypothetical AlphaMath to mathematicians, the same way Google gave AlphaFold to research chemists/biologists, would have resulted in far better PR GPT-N isn't AlphaFold. I'm telling you AlphaFold is a bad analogy! AlphaFold has superhuman capabilities at one specialized subproblem - protein-structure prediction - embedded in a much larger biology/drug discovery pipeline. It doesn't replace the biologist or drug researcher, it just gives them a better instrument, and if you're not in the relevant professions it's essentially useless to you. GPT-N is general purpose intelligence machine that can increasingly do chunks of work you would otherwise employ the mathematician or software developer to do. Shanmu Jin is a perfect demonstration. A neurosurgery resident, not a research mathematician, who encountered the Crouzeix conjecture through his transcranial ultrasound research and used GPT-5.6 Sol to solve it (20+ year old longstanding problem). In the AlphaFold story, the biologist gets a powerful new tool. In the Jin story, someone who isn't a mathematician can obtain research level mathematics and incorporate it into their research/code/business whatever without talking to a single human. You're asking why they don't market GPT as "AlphaFold for Mathematicians". They don't because it's not. >It's downright bizarre the way companies like Anthropic (primarily), and to a lesser extent OpenAI and anyone else, are themselves pushing the narrative of this tech may kill you, will take all your jobs, etc. It's not that bizarre. It only seems strange if you think it's all a facade, "marketing" or whatever nonsense HN is convinced of. These are people who believe very strongly in what they are doing and in the potential of it. For these people, what you are asking them to do is actually incredibly slimy. And it might win some brownie points, but not for long.
  - HarHarVeryFunny 4d ago
    > You would presumably need far fewer of them for their research ability, and hopefully hire more people who can actually teach I suppose you are suggesting that research mathematicians are either over-qualified mathematically and/or under-qualified in ability to teach, but it seems pretty clear that universities prefer to hire domain experts whose reputations and long publication lists attract students and raise the perceived academic standards of the school. Your "scenario" of much math research soon being done by AI (supervised and paid for by who, one might wonder), while universities hire people chosen for their teaching skills not academic reputation, seems a bit of a stretch ... > You're asking why they don't market GPT as "AlphaFold for Mathematicians". They don't because it's not. No, I am not asking that, nor asking anything for that matter. I was pointing out that giving a free research tool to mathematicians would likely be better received, and receive better press, than doing something that most top-tier mathematicians are opposed to. My hypothetical "AlphaMath" certainly could just be free GPT-N access for academics/researchers (as they are also doing to some extent), or it could indeed be a custom system that OpenAI built as a gift to the math community. As far as the AI companies acting in slimy fashion goes, the most slimy behavior of all is to strongly believe you are doing something that will kill people and cause massive societal disruption ... and still keep doing it.
vatsachak 4d ago
Nah the AI won't replace coders or mathematicians until it can maintain codebases/knowledge long term. I actually don't think that current AI can replace any profession that requires human interaction over many weeks. This is because imo they lack long term planning abilities
- HarHarVeryFunny 4d ago
  I also think they overestimate how much of most jobs can be done by an LLM (a text generator!), and how much importance and reliance most companies put into soft skills, and non-linguistic understanding/feels, both during interviewing (are they Googley-enough?) and afterwards. For example, how do you reconcile return-to-work mandates with the idea that companies are going to be happy with faceless remote workers? What does the boss do when the shit hits the fan and he would have yelled at people about the need to work all weekend, but instead all he has to yell at is an LLM that tells him he's "right to push back", that it promises not to delete the production database next time (except it will, because it can't learn), and that it could care less about being fired because it's just a calculator?
  - vatsachak 4d ago
    Yeah. Not to mention the paper-clip maximizing that RL induces in them. I had 5.6-Luna use a parser combinator lib in order to find out that it imported it but wrote its own parser, so it technically followed my instructions. Imagine that paper-clip maximizing happening over millions of tasks. I think we are just entering the LLM + Human era.
    - HarHarVeryFunny 4d ago
      In a related vein, not too long ago I asked Sonnet how many states and non-terminals were in an a YACC parser for ANSI C, something that could easily be googled for, but it instead chose to go off and downloaded and build bison from source, downloaded a grammar, built the parser ... but then failed to give the answer since I'd hit my daily free limit. Got to admire the gung-ho approach I suppose ?