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- Hacker News
- Anyone else print their white papers before reading? (At least the short ones)
- The chess analogy doesn't quite work for me. In chess, an engine's move is useful because it helps you win. In math, a proof is useful because it helps you understand something - and from that, you can build more. If a proof is incomprehensible, it's like a chess move that only works in that one specific position. Useless. The ABC conjecture is a perfect example - Mochizuki's proof might be correct, but no one can follow it, so it's basically dead. AI proofs are going to be like that, but way more of them. Tao's essay is a great starting point
- Terence argues that explanation of results ("understanding") will be the new bottleneck in math research but I am not sure this is the real bottleneck for progress.
Understanding was critical for the field to progress when only humans were involved but if humans are not needed to make progress, I wonder if we split into two worlds: an AI math-world where amazing new results continue at a rapid pace bottlenecked only by compute/cost and a human math-world where we understand a subset of the AI math-world as a hobby (similar to Stockfish vs human chess).
by rramach - If you're having dinner like me and prefer to watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0--ZH1lOzgby piker
- What is being made is "what are our core values?" argument. One does not need to be a mathematician to know how poorly this worked for large communities when incentives are misaligned...
If a subset of mathematicians, use AI to condense timelines focusing on goal 6.2 exclusively and make rapid progress and reach a proverbial inflection point — one where value proposition of the using this new normal is too enticing to give up — everyone will ask: "This thing is so awesome. Why should I care about your values?"
by itissid - I don't know why anyone should care about understanding the results if the AI is better at math than us. It'd be like demanding that human mathematicians are banned from publishing until their cats understand the theorems.
If Amazon uses AI math to come up with better routing, the cats can benefit from cheaper delivery fees just as much as humans can. No understanding needed.
The human brain is being obsoleted, soon thinking is going to be a recreational activity like weightlifting. If you want to think as a hobby, that's fine, but most people will be free of that toil of unwanted brain labor.
by a2ff6eeb0 - Terence Tao's quote about AI's math proofs is relatable outside of pure math: "the writing very often dwells at length on trivialities while passing briefly through — or even actively obscuring — the most interesting and novel portions of the argument."
- Tao's Rule of Thumb (which applies very well to software):
> My own suggested rule of thumb: if the authors cannot convincingly demonstrate that they are able to give a clear, expert-level talk on their results, one that is correct and properly attributed, then the result should not be published. A proof that no human can properly explain should be viewed as incomplete, even if it has been formally verified.