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| ▲ | psvv 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I think the parent comment meant professional, high-level chess. The kind people get played to play, not just do for a hobby. That's absolutely on life support. I'm not sure what the equivalent would look like in the math field, but it probably involves a lot of mathematicians losing their jobs and the quality of human-produced math decreasing overall. The quality of the math in general would be fine, since in this scenario cpus will keep producing it. The quality of cpu-cpu chess games is quite high, beyond human understanding in many cases. Chess is a weird example because it doesn't really have any utility beyond itself. Even pure math sometimes ends up having use in the strangest places. Although if no one understands the frontier math (because no one is getting paid to), I'm not sure it even matters what the quality of the cpu math is? It's a bit like a tree falling in a forest. If an LLM proves a theorem but no one understands it, did it make a sound? | | |
| ▲ | jasonfarnon 38 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | "Although if no one understands the frontier math (because no one is getting paid to), I'm not sure it even matters what the quality of the cpu math is?" Presumably AI will be connect the dots to the applications. As the declaration says, this isn't just about math. Human understanding is losing economic value. You can understand stuff on your own time, I guess. The standard justification for pure math to holders of purse-strings is something like "it might lead to a useful application down the road, like crypto, who knows". That looks pretty inefficient now. We have to entertain the possibility that AI can develop the math needed for any application we put to it. Eg if number theory didn't exist, we could have asked AI for a way to transit messages securely and it would maybe come up with fermats little theorem as part of its solution or maybe come up with an approach we can't conceive of right now seeing as most of us are constrained to available number theory. Like how in the last year when I give an LLM a programming project I see it doesnt even bother with of the many software libraries I and others have written and just codes up the calls it needs on the fly or finds some other ad hoc solution. | |
| ▲ | stabbles 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Mathematics is more than establishing arbitrary facts (although some look like curiosities), it's also defining what interesting research directions are and establishing common language/notation. I think that will stay relevant? | | |
| ▲ | Xirdus 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | In theory you can automate finding interesting research directions by identifying conjectures with many dependencies. And notation has never been mathematicians' forte, with them trying to cram the entirety of universe into single letters. | |
| ▲ | vouaobrasil 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | People become interested in things when they become invested in it personally, because they've contributed to it. So I don't think it will stay relevant... |
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| ▲ | fidotron 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > It's a bit like a tree falling in a forest. If an LLM proves a theorem but no one understands it, did it make a sound? But in future most proofs will be for consumption by other AI models in the pursuit of yet other proofs. It's kind of surprising so many mathematicians act surprised by this given this was clearly where automated proof assistants would lead. I guess they assumed they'd always be the ones guiding them. | | |
| ▲ | mb7733 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > But in future most proofs will be for consumption by other AI models in the pursuit of yet other proofs. What is the purpose of that? Its like art being produced for AI to consume. What is gained from that? | | |
| ▲ | TheOtherHobbes 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It's going to be hard to compete with something that has access to all of math at once and can find connections between elements that appear unrelated to humans. And at some point AI will start suggesting - or doing - physical experiments. | |
| ▲ | fidotron 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Well if it proves useless presumably they'd stop doing it. But if AI is to recursively self improve understanding and evolving its own foundations, which are clearly mathematical, is essential. There is no need for humans to grasp what is going on in that loop. | |
| ▲ | 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | saghm 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I mean, was the point of math ever just because some humans enjoyed doing it? Even though a lot of it is theoretical, there's been all sorts of useful things that have come out of it as well due to an improved understanding of the universe through new ways of thinking about it. If it got to the point where no human could understand it and there were no ways to actually use it, I don't think anyone would bother having their computers doing it at all. | | |
| ▲ | lacunary 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | wouldn't AI solving problems in science, engineering, economics, etc be able to apply the new AI math? |
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| ▲ | magicalist 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [dead] |
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| ▲ | charcircuit 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | >but no one understands it, did it make a sound? Does your "one" only contain humans or does it also contain other AI systems. AI math is not a single monolithic thing, but a distributed one. I see value in sharing proofs even among just AI. |
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| ▲ | debatem1 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Also, you learn to be a better chess player by... playing better players. The widespread availability of chess engines has made flawless opponents available to every player. If your goals are understanding the game, self improvement, building thinking skills-- this is the best chess has ever been. It's only if your goal is to beat every opponent you can find that chess is in a bad place. | | |
| ▲ | ArcHound 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | It's not that easy. Playing stockfish is like playing tennis against the wall (for untitled players at least). Even if you don't blunder anything, you'll still find yourself in a worse position without any clue as of what went wrong and why. Whereas when playing humans, they can usually explain their approach and when they noticed errors in your play. | | |
| ▲ | debatem1 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I mean, I'm not a great player but I've learned a lot from working through games with stockfish using a git repo and a small script that lets me rewind to different moves and try different approaches. It may not explain its moves but if you're thinking through what's happened you can usually debug your game anyway. | |
| ▲ | Quekid5 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Playing stockfish is like playing tennis against the wall (for untitled players at least). It's the same for Magnus Carlsen. Even with Queen odds, Stockfish is literally unbeatable for the best players in the world. It's just too strong at evaluating all kinds of random tangent moves (and ensuing positional advantage) which no human player can possibly pay attention due to the time required. Stockfish vs any human is like Carlsen vs other players by about 3-5 orders of magnitude[0]. It's that stark. [0] A wild pun appears. EDIT: To avoid having to respond to each responder, fair comments about Queen odds. Maybe I was thinking Rook odds? Also, I kinda lumped Stockfish in with all the other engines, but I realize there are other engines with different properties ofc. | | |
| ▲ | VulgarExigency 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Well, that's actually not true at all. Stockfish is not a very good odds player and at queen odds is easily beatable even by bad players like me. It will just trade down into more trivial and easier to win positions that it perceives as "less bad", since everything is super-losing anyway when you start down a queen. Leela odds networks, on the other hand, are an entirely different beast. I cannot beat Leela queen odds, much less rook or minor piece odds, and even GMs struggle against Leela knight odds. Without odds though, yeah, Stockfish is just incomprehensibly strong by human standards. All top chess engines are, but Stockfish moreso. | |
| ▲ | ArcHound 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | No worries, I know stockfish is unbeatable by humans. But sometimes, these GMs can flag it, which counts as a win (especially when it's proxied by a cheater). Sometimes they can also explain the idea that cost them the game, so they've learned something maybe. Whereas us scrubs literally cannot do anything at all for reasons completely beyond our understanding. | | |
| ▲ | jacobolus an hour ago | parent [-] | | > Whereas us scrubs literally cannot do anything at all for reasons completely beyond our understanding Computer moves are typically much more concrete than human moves: a human will play based on pattern matching ("intuition") and can only make explicit calculation of a small fraction of possibilities, after which decisions are guided by guesswork. The computers are unbeatable in practice because they can calculate concretely in seconds what might take an expert human long intensive study to notice, and they don't make the same kinds of oversights humans can make. But if you stop and explore a particular position for an extended time, and if you have an intermediate level of chess skill, you too can probably often (usually?) figure out why it's doing something. Sometimes understanding the computer's reasons takes searching multiple branches of a tree several unlikely looking moves deep, but the collection of threats the computer was preemptively thwarting, traps it was setting, etc. are comprehensible to humans with enough effort, especially in games between the computer and a human. The frustrating thing about playing against the computer is that it notices and thwarts every plan you might come up with, before you make up the plan yourself, and it doesn't make (human-apparent) mistakes, so the game ends up feeling hopeless. Nothing you try works on it, and if your idea is even slightly inaccurate it will be exploited. |
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| ▲ | magicalist 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I mean, this is the problem with analogies and trying to use them to prove things, right? People working through problems from an analysis book with their friend (or an LLM) is not the same as research mathematics. People playing in a chess club is not the same as what makes for a good chess tournament. Lumping everything together is just making this branch of the conversation less relevant. |
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