14 ms·

LLMs can only repeat and interpolate data. They can't create anything new. So, you don't need to go that far.

TheMayorOfDunce 3d ago
this is immediately disprovable and embarrassingly naive in the year of AI generating cancer vaccines and solving Navier-Stokes. You can argue "the vaccine is just interpolating chemicals together" and "the solution uncovered is just interpolating mathematical operations together", but by that standard there is literally nothing new under the sun.
- kelseyfrog 3d ago
  The Navier-Stokes solution was an interpolation of existing data.
  - BryceEller 3d ago
    All mathematic breakthroughs could be characterized as an interpolation of existing data
    - GPerson 3d ago
      Not really. There’s no honest sense in which quantum mechanics is interpolated from the text of Euclid’s elements, to demonstrate the point with a very extreme example. Many mathematical breakthroughs of the past seem to have involved the observation of semantically interesting concepts, beyond the syntax of known theories. (To onlookers this particular post makes no claim about AI’s capacity to make the same observations.)
      - kelseyfrog 3d ago
        It depends on the subspace in which the interpolation is framed.
  - TheMayorOfDunce 3d ago
    admittedly I am not a mathematician, so the Navier-Stokes solution is just an example I am using. But how is it not something "new" if it did not exist before? At what point could something ever possibly be new, if "new" means "this uses absolutely zero existing elements"? Nothing in math would ever be "new". Nothing in physics or chemistry would ever be "new", by this standard. It seems to me that the only reason to declare this solution "not new" is specifically to dismiss AI. If a human had deduced the Navier-Stokes solution, who would bother to scoff "that's not new! the numbers already existed!"?
    - GPerson 3d ago
      It’s all about what “new” means. It is possible to prove something in a very tedious way using preexisting techniques. There have many times in history been new ideas which are not just very impressive applications of old techniques. I’m still not aware of any famous problem in mathematics being solved by an unambiguous introduction of a genuinely new idea or semantic concept in this sense, as the candidates I previously had in mind have fallen into question by new findings of non-cited work; i.e. many if not all it seems have been impressive applications using ideas from known frameworks. I don’t know if this will continue into the future or not, but I think it’s important to try to make an honest assessment of reality at all times. Of course in isolation it is a strict positive to have a verified truth value to any particular statement. Mathematicians currently are advocating for the idea that human understanding greater than this also be prioritized. There are in fact utilitarian arguments for this but I won’t go into everything here.
    - mjburgess 3d ago
      The claim is OpenAI stole the work of mathematicians who had the same proof that they had developed using chatgpt conversations. Since by default, 'sharing' is turned on, and it often 'turns itself on' -- it is plausible gpt6 had been trained on the work of mathematicians who had effectively solved this problem in private.
      - jacomoRodriguez 3d ago
        If inrember correctly, this mathematicians worked on a simpler version of the problem and called transforming this in the solution to the wider problem a "remarkable" thing to do. Based in this, solving this problem is very impressive
  - casey2 3d ago
    If they can "interpolate" existing data to that level then saying "just don't hack" doesn't make any sense, hacking is derived from knowledge of software systems. It's far harder to solve navier-stokes than creating a program that replicates and abuses computer resources. You could as models improve continue to remove more and more training data, what happens when there is no more data left to remove but a running system still outperforms humans? I think you grossly overvalue data.

this is immediately disprovable and embarrassingly naive in the year of AI generating cancer vaccines and solving Navier-Stokes. You can argue "the vaccine is just interpolating chemicals together" and "the solution uncovered is just interpolating mathematical operations together", but by that standard there is literally nothing new under the sun.

kelseyfrog 3d ago
The Navier-Stokes solution was an interpolation of existing data.
- BryceEller 3d ago
  All mathematic breakthroughs could be characterized as an interpolation of existing data
  - GPerson 3d ago
    Not really. There’s no honest sense in which quantum mechanics is interpolated from the text of Euclid’s elements, to demonstrate the point with a very extreme example. Many mathematical breakthroughs of the past seem to have involved the observation of semantically interesting concepts, beyond the syntax of known theories. (To onlookers this particular post makes no claim about AI’s capacity to make the same observations.)
    - kelseyfrog 3d ago
      It depends on the subspace in which the interpolation is framed.
- TheMayorOfDunce 3d ago
  admittedly I am not a mathematician, so the Navier-Stokes solution is just an example I am using. But how is it not something "new" if it did not exist before? At what point could something ever possibly be new, if "new" means "this uses absolutely zero existing elements"? Nothing in math would ever be "new". Nothing in physics or chemistry would ever be "new", by this standard. It seems to me that the only reason to declare this solution "not new" is specifically to dismiss AI. If a human had deduced the Navier-Stokes solution, who would bother to scoff "that's not new! the numbers already existed!"?
  - GPerson 3d ago
    It’s all about what “new” means. It is possible to prove something in a very tedious way using preexisting techniques. There have many times in history been new ideas which are not just very impressive applications of old techniques. I’m still not aware of any famous problem in mathematics being solved by an unambiguous introduction of a genuinely new idea or semantic concept in this sense, as the candidates I previously had in mind have fallen into question by new findings of non-cited work; i.e. many if not all it seems have been impressive applications using ideas from known frameworks. I don’t know if this will continue into the future or not, but I think it’s important to try to make an honest assessment of reality at all times. Of course in isolation it is a strict positive to have a verified truth value to any particular statement. Mathematicians currently are advocating for the idea that human understanding greater than this also be prioritized. There are in fact utilitarian arguments for this but I won’t go into everything here.
  - mjburgess 3d ago
    The claim is OpenAI stole the work of mathematicians who had the same proof that they had developed using chatgpt conversations. Since by default, 'sharing' is turned on, and it often 'turns itself on' -- it is plausible gpt6 had been trained on the work of mathematicians who had effectively solved this problem in private.
    - jacomoRodriguez 3d ago
      If inrember correctly, this mathematicians worked on a simpler version of the problem and called transforming this in the solution to the wider problem a "remarkable" thing to do. Based in this, solving this problem is very impressive
- casey2 3d ago
  If they can "interpolate" existing data to that level then saying "just don't hack" doesn't make any sense, hacking is derived from knowledge of software systems. It's far harder to solve navier-stokes than creating a program that replicates and abuses computer resources. You could as models improve continue to remove more and more training data, what happens when there is no more data left to remove but a running system still outperforms humans? I think you grossly overvalue data.