Won't deny that this is an interesting idea, but I feel like waiting on the output of an LLM for 40 hours feels like it is completely antithetical to what makes classic Hackathons appealing / educative.

More generally, I don't think the shape of a hackathon (intensely working for a short timespan) maps at all onto the way LLM Math progress has seemingly been made so far; AFAIK it mostly involves picking out something for the Model, then having it run for a week with sporadic correction / encouragement.

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Donald 3 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Have you done any math hacking with sol/astra or fable? It’s more fun than using them for coding. The models are great at the monotony, like constructing a Gröbner-basis, etc. But they’re all still absolutely awful at coming up with new ideas, new proof methods, or new constructive forms. So you spend all your time on coming up with novel hypotheses yourself and handing off the rote work to an agent.

It’s also quite fun to get instant results by finding isomorphisms into unfamiliar areas of mathematics that previously would’ve required some networking in order to build a collaborative relationship.

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Aboutplants 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If the goal is to accomplish something then why limit yourself with available tools?

I’m not a full on AI optimist but it is absolutely the most powerful tool in a host of applications. From a Hackathon perspective, obviously in the 90s it was much more unorganized, but the same ethos existed. Use all available tools to accomplish the goal/task, it’s where a lot of incredible learning came out of. The same will hopefully happen in scenarios like this one

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a2ff6eeb0 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It seems like making progress on math is letting the AI run fully autonomously for a few days, occasionally asking it to keep going.

I'm not sure people need to organize a mathathon to wait for a computer to give a printout. They mainly need tokens.

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jhonof an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I think the purpose of an event like this would be to optimize the process so that it isn't just occasionally asking an AI to keep going.

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charlieyu1 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Are they actually autonomous? I’d say subject knowledge at the prompt stage plays a large part towards getting proper results

	▲	a2ff6eeb0 an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		When Claude made progress on the Riemann conjecture, here are the kind of prompts used: > Jarred's input was mostly limited to sending Claude messages of encouragement (mostly variants of “keep going” or “believe in yourself”).2 This seems to have helped Claude overcome some initial skepticism that it could make meaningful progress.
	▲	hgoel an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Prompting for some of the results was almost the "Computer, do a breakthrough. Make no mistakes." meme. Just someone telling the model to keep trying a couple of times. Unfortunately we don't actually know what kind of prompting was done for the more prominent results.

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loloquwowndueo 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If the goal is to run 42km why limit yourself? Use a car and win.

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thatseasy an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> why limit yourself with available tools

Because the companies that run frontier models are malevolent by every metric.

They are destroying the environment, especially those in neighborhoods of low income people.

They are empowering their owners who are some of the most deplorable and duplicitous people living.

They are destroying personal compute to avoid competition with local models by buying all computer components with “promised money” and forcing their P into AI.

They stole the entire creative output of humanity and are trying to sell it back to us.

They are only good for giving wealth access to skill while removing from the skilled the ability to access wealth.

They are being used to kill in war and for surveillance.

Seriously why would you use them? Your use only emboldens them; making you complicit in their nefarious success.

I for one, am one who walks away from Omelas.

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Fraterkes 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Did you read the article? This is not a hackathon where you build software, it’s one where you’re trying to get a model to make progress on a frontier math problem. The point is that that activity may not map well onto the shape of a hackathon