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rusk 19 hours ago

Did an AI do that on its own though? I heard it was human mathematicians using a sophisticated machine as a tool.

meowface 19 hours ago | parent | next [-]

All of the latest big proofs were driven by professional human mathematicians steering and priming the models, yes.

All of the best AI-made software projects are also driven by experienced human software developers steering and priming the models. Does that mean the projects "aren't made by AI"?

No, it just means AI is not quite good enough yet to fully replace humans, and, so, unsurprisingly, the best results will be obtained from people who are already great at a field and who take the time to squeeze as much force multiplication out of LLMs as possible. The AI is still doing well over 95% of the significant work.

TomGarden 18 hours ago | parent | next [-]

While I agree with you, I think we also have to concede that this is not how these accomplishments have been presented. I'd argue most people I've seen talk about this online are unaware of the mathematicians steering the models.

basch 18 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

“Good enough to replace humans” isn’t necessarily the benchmark.

The question is is a computer with a human stronger than a computer without a human. At what point does the hybrid go from being stronger, to the human getting in the way, or steering the computer in more wrong directions that right ones, or the human not being able to keep up. Does the human add enough extra randomness to be of value for a while, even as a minor co-processor.

meowface 25 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I have little doubt that for many years, AI + human will be better, and then eventually AI will be so good that humans mostly won't offer anything. That latter state will probably take at least 10 more years, but will likely happen within our lifetime.

TheOtherHobbes 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Underappreciated point. The point of inflection is where humans switch from being a driver to a liability.

But I don't think it's randomness, because that would be easy to add. It's more like a different perspective on the training data, a different set of perception categories, and a different set of skills used to work with all of the above.

Those skills aren't very efficient, but they're the best we can do. We're used to their strengths but we don't like to think about their limitations.

It's completely plausible that AI will replace some of them, and not implausible it could replace and improve on all of them.

basch 17 hours ago | parent [-]

It's also not necessarily implausible that AI/we decide that performance is better with humans in the loop somewhere, even if its reduced to something like mechanical turk.

agileAlligator 18 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

https://chatgpt.com/share/6a5fdc7a-d6f8-83e8-bbea-8deb42cfed...

Terrence Tao's conversation with ChatGPT is very illuminating.

HN Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49010345

chrisjj 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> All of the best AI-made software projects are also driven by experienced human software developers steering and priming the models. Does that mean the projects "aren't made by AI"? No

Software devs steer and prime compilers too. Those tools don't "make the project" and nor does your so-called AI.

simianwords 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> All of the latest big proofs were driven by professional human mathematicians steering and priming the models, yes.

False, navier stokes was solved in one shot without steering

rsfern 16 hours ago | parent [-]

According to OpenAI, but they haven’t exactly been transparent about what information the prompt entailed.

The bigger question is to what extent did expert mathematicians metaprompt the model with fruitful solution strategies through their sessions finding their way into training data. Answering that question definitively is kind of important for understanding the models contribution/capability. But I feel like people want to turn this into a debate about priority and credit which is sort of secondary

mstank 19 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It sounds like LLMs were pretty useful to them…

ModernMech 18 hours ago | parent [-]

So was Lean. Did Lean solve it?

zamadatix 18 hours ago | parent [-]

Nothing is solved in isolation but credit usually goes to wherever the new work in the paper comes from instead of the whole mountain of previous mathematics or existing tools used. The most relevant of those get referenced and then this reference tree builds a tree of collective base work needed across history.

ModernMech 17 hours ago | parent [-]

Usually credit goes to the people wielding the tools, not the tools themselves.

zamadatix 17 hours ago | parent [-]

Usually there has never been a tool which performed the part relevant to getting any credit.

E.g. in the first famous computer assisted proof (of the four color theorem) the computer only executed the resulting calculations defined from the new logic, it did not have part in the work needed to show those calculations could answer the problem nor did it come up with the actual calculations to do.

broast 18 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The way frontier models work, that loop will get compressed to a one-shot within a version or two

simianwords 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> I heard it was human mathematicians using a sophisticated machine as a tool.

where did you "hear" this? OpenAI said they only prompted it and it solved the problem in one shot without any help