The Advisory Group states in its recommendations [1]:

"We want to state clearly from the start: we do not endorse this practice, and we ask them to stop testing advanced mathematical problems on proprietary models."

To me, this is a take against progress so that mathematicians can keep their jobs. What would we do if, instead of math, we were talking about diseases? Are we going to keep diseases around so that doctors can keep their jobs too?

[1] https://agmai.org/general-sep29/

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tchalla 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Why did you leave out the entire quote?

> At present, some frontier AI labs are testing advanced mathematical problems on proprietary models that remain inaccessible to the broader scientific community. Our recommendations are formulated with this practical context in mind. However, ideally, they would not do so. We want to state clearly from the start: we do not endorse this practice, and we ask them to stop testing advanced mathematical problems on proprietary models.

To me, the issue is that the models are proprietary which are only accessible to a few people in 2 digits. It's not about progress but access.

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aaraujo002 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Maybe, but it still seems like an excuse. OpenAI has a proprietary model capable of solving these problems and is willing to share the results with the mathematical community. So basically, the ask is to just not use the model and leave the problems unsolved?

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adrian_m 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The ask is to let mathematicians outside of OpenAI use it, ie. at least wait until the model is released.

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strange_quark 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I don’t think that’s sufficient. If they want to be good stewards of mathematical research and not just doing marketing, they need to at the very least tell us the datasets and any techniques they used to train this model. IMO that’s probably just as if not more valuable than a dump of un-reviewed results.

They won’t because they don’t care and the only way it got this good is something along the lines of they trained on every mathematician’s codex sessions even if they opted out because they consider the thinking traces or output and metadata fair game.

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agnosticmantis 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Which mathematicians though? Only fields medalists? Grad students? Any hobbyist wanting access?

These models are too expensive for broad access unfortunately.

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Jtarii 3 hours ago | parent [-]

ChatGPT pro is accessible to literally anyone who has a job and lives in a developed country.

	▲	Jweb_Guru 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Literally every single one of these papers was developed with an internal model that not even most OpenAI employees have access to.

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TeeWEE 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

The work is not having AI poop out these docs the work is validating them and publishing them. OpenAI doesn’t care and wanted to race to publish potential findings and let others review it which is lazy and selfish

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jhrmnn 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It all hinges on the definition of “progress”. The debate of the past month is all about questioning whether formally proving outstanding unproven theorems without human understanding constitutes progress. This is quite different from solving diseases.

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mattr03 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don't think this is a reasonable take at all. Most work on maths has no real benefit other than to further human understanding of maths - it's more like an art. Nothing is gained from OpenAI solving all these problems but taking jobs from mathematicians. Other than advertising for OpenAI at least. It could not be more different from having AI work on disease research etc.

	▲	bravoetch 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> Most work on maths has no real benefit other than to further human understanding of maths - it's more like an art. It's been a while since I was reminded of this xkcd: https://xkcd.com/435/
	▲	zeroonetwothree 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Most math isn't just proving novel famous results. Just like most of software engineering isn't writing code.

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medler 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The rest of that document makes a pretty compelling case for why this is a bad practice

	▲	esafak 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I fear that professional mathematics will wither, and there will be nobody left to digest the AI results of the future, leaving us unable to challenge the AI.

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4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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osiris970 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Comical ask

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bmitc 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Advocating purely for progress and not humanitarian value is how we'll all get enslaved.

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perching_aix 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The trope you're drawing a parallel with has a (to me) compelling counter though: there being a cure for every disease wouldn't stop people from getting sick.

How this maps back to math, idk.

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warkdarrior 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The latest posts from Terry Tao on Mastodon effectively ask for an AI to explain its results to human mathematicians.

> "I believe that AI can contribute positively in all of these directions [NB: exposition, community building, new directions of study]"

https://mathstodon.xyz/@tao/117395269325940185

	▲	binlog a few seconds ago \| parent [-]
		There are a dozen+ AIs available to you that can do that right now.

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fph 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

...but we're not talking about diseases. Publishing an AI-generated Navier-Stokes solution does not save lives. (And, in fact, it harms some.)