Comment by seamossfet
7 hours ago
The big take away for is the fact that the ONLY reason why chatgpt was able to get to this counterexample was because of the knowledge of the person driving the conversation.
I don't think chatgpt could have come to this on its own without the amount of steering he did, which just validates the idea that AI is not a replacement for human expertise but an amplifier.
You are badly informed the counter-example was found shortly before. Terrence just tried to replicate how it was found.
Has the conversation that originally led to the counterexample been released? I assume it was similar to this one, also driven by a highly knowledgeable mathematician.
I'm sure no AI would be able to find it if asked to "Find a counterexample to the Jacobian conjecture. Make no mistakes".
Maybe true, I'm not sure, but this isn't the conversation where the counterexample was found.
> I don't think chatgpt could have come to this on its own without the amount of steering he did, which just validates the idea that AI is not a replacement for human expertise but an amplifier.
The problem is that, what happens to human expertise as people start to use AI earlier and earlier in their careers, so that in 50 years? The problem is that Terry Tao spent decades as a mathematician before ever encoutering AI. Of course he and people his age will be able to drive AI somewhat sanely and use it to their advantage.
But as more people grow up with AI, they will likely not reach levels like Terry Tao because their exposure to AI and the temptation to use it will certainly dull raw human intellect over time.
I don't know if I agree with the premise that having access to AI results in dulling human intellect.
I feel like to get to Terry's level you need a combination of passion and aptitude for the subject. People that don't want to learn about a topic will always look for shortcuts, which I think represents the vast majority of people. Terry Tao is quite exceptional, and I think exceptional people will still exist even when the "easy" button is bigger than it's ever been.
The problem is that learning never stops. You can't just go through school, become a junior in X field, then start using AI. Then you'll forever be a junior. You have to make a choice when you're working a job: either use AI-first workflows to increase your productivity, or don't and increase your knowledge and skill.
My wording is specific. You can use AI and increase knowledge and skill, but this requires you to be driving the AI at such a low level you don't get the full speedup. As an example, you can write code yourself with AI as an assistant, but it's not as fast as AI writing everything.
So now we end up stuck in a situation where every professional needs to choose between long term skill growth or speed, as anyone who's worked a job before knows, speed will always be the one chosen.