| ▲ | fooker an hour ago |
| I find this entirely self serving. Terrence Tao was very supportive of AI and formalizing math with lean when it looked like it was giving ‘generalists’ like him an edge over mathematicians too deep into one particular niche field. But now that it’s letting everyone, including mathematicians who are perhaps too specialized, explore ideas and patterns from related math fields, he’s suddenly ‘on a war footing’. |
|
| ▲ | stillpointlab 38 minutes ago | parent | next [-] |
| I don't think it is self-serving. Tao has stated plainly that he thought LLMs would go the route of assistants, like co-pilots. But what he feels now is that they are actually being engineered to be replacements. His claim is that the way OpenAI dropped these math results isn't "assisting" anyone, so we should all read between the lines. Consider any man at his job, fighting the good fight. Your boss says "I've hired this man to assist you" and you are happy to finally have some help with your difficult task. Then one morning you come into work and see that the coming day’s work was done overnight by this other fellow. And the realization sinks in, he isn't there to help you, he is there to replace you. In this view his reaction seems totally expected. I expect many professionals, e.g. doctors, lawyers, accountants, etc. will make this realization sooner or later. The companies are saying these tools will assist professionals, but in reality they are aiming to replace them. |
| |
| ▲ | sorc3rer 30 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > But what he feels now is that they are actually being engineered to be replacements lol. lmao even. I guess there is a first time for everything. |
|
|
| ▲ | xeonmc an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I think it's a bit of an unfair characterization, see this post for the nuances in how the math community approached the development: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50128468 |
| |
| ▲ | zergrush 41 minutes ago | parent [-] | | entirely fair. basically both sides now dislike that he flip flopped its either you are anti-AI all the way or flexible and adaptive without making strong opinions that can be put on record. most people are in the latter and its growing. math is solved. | | |
| ▲ | magicalist 31 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > basically both sides now dislike that he flip flopped No, the dumb thing is the idea that there are "sides". > basically both sides now dislike that he flip flopped Literally the only people with this opinion of Tao are internet forum warriors who have no expertise in the field and who's opinion of Tao don't matter in the slightest. | | |
| ▲ | fooker 27 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > who's opinion of Tao don't matter in the slightest. Similarly, Tao being ‘on the warpath’ does not matter in the slightest when it comes to formalizing math and finding proofs to important unsolved problems with AI. | | |
| ▲ | magicalist 11 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > Similarly, Tao being ‘on the warpath’ Do you think that this is a quote from the article you just read? I swear half the comments here are just from people reading dunks on r/singularity and x and getting real mad at strawmen. |
|
|
|
|
|
| ▲ | oytis 36 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I've never perceived him as 100% supportive. He has rather been open-minded about a new technology and exploring what it can do. Now it turns out it can destroy his field, so he's naturally against it (at least against the destruction, not necessarily against the technology) |
| |
| ▲ | fooker 32 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I think ‘destroy his field’ is ‘destroy his method of being famous in the field’. Terrence Tao is famous because of solving problems better that most mathematicians because he has an uncanny ability to look across different math fields. AI gets everyone this ability for 20 to 200$ per month, eventually free. Most mathematicians are happy to see interesting problems in their field being solved, and are looking to build on these to find more interesting problems. | | |
| ▲ | oytis 30 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Hm... I'm not a mathematician, but why would these new more interesting problems not be solvable in the same way by the same - or newer - models? | | |
| ▲ | fooker 26 minutes ago | parent [-] | | They will be, that’s the point. The point is to make the field progress by discovering new things! Who gets credit for what and how credibility is assigned is going to be muddy for a while but that’s the case whenever a bunch of new science happens in close sequence. History is full of math/science discoveries having debated and dubious provenance. | | |
| ▲ | oytis 24 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I can't see how the field can even exist - not to say progress - if any problem can be solved before a human can understand it. Looks like mathematics without mathematicians, "progressing" in the same way as paperclip optimizer progresses in its productivity. | | |
| ▲ | fooker 17 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Math doesn’t exist to make mathematicians famous. It provides deep insights into logic, computation, provides tools for us to understand the universe, establishes mind blowing relationships between seemingly unrelated things. For example “how much information can a black hole contain?” | | |
| ▲ | oytis 8 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > provides deep insights To whom? If there are no humans in the field, there is no one to get the insight. Maybe you are right, and there is just a new type of a mathematician being born, but as an outsider I just can't see what they could look like, what will be left for humans to contribute |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| ▲ | geraneum 39 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] |
| > But now that it’s letting everyone Eh... That “everyone” is a multi billion (trillion?) $ company paying top mathematicians specifically hired for generating math proofs. |
| |
| ▲ | fooker 36 minutes ago | parent [-] | | No, pretty much every math PhD student and researcher is now using the AI+lean combo. |
|
