Comment by mosura
11 hours ago
> What the mathematicians are saying is stop pouring resources that most mathematicians can only dream of accessing into projects that are actively damaging to their field. They face a massive challenge of figuring out how maths can evolve in the face of this new technology, and this is not helping.
Is it reasonable for any field to make such demands? If this were doctors objecting to AI becoming good at medical practice would you have the same concerns?
While any idea of OpenAI spying on people to pursue their goals is disgusting, the rest of this is par for the course, as Kasparov experienced with IBM in the 90s. Humans still play chess after all.
It's not a simple matter of "becoming good at", and yes, I could very well have similar concerns, depending on how it impacts the field. The statement itself mentions that such concerns exist in many other fields.
I doubt OpenAI will take such a combative stance and accuse these mathematicians of "demanding" things, as you do. As I said, the purpose of this is marketing and the statement simultaneously undermines the value of that marketing (showing these projects as irresponsible) and gives these companies an even better piece of marketing in its place: "our AI got so good at maths the mathematicians begged us to stop". It's entirely possible they will stop pouring millions into these projects.
So let’s say OpenAI cure cancer and put every cancer researcher out of work depriving them of intellectual satisfaction, this would also be a problem? It would certainly impact the field.
The fact is these fields are supported by society because of the benefits to everyone else. Once the same results can be achieved in a cheaper and faster way that is what will be done. We should mourn this in the same way we do buggy whip manufacturers. Again people still ride horses.
> So let’s say OpenAI cure cancer and put every cancer researcher out of work depriving them of intellectual satisfaction, this would also be a problem? It would certainly impact the field.
Would you expect Fields medalists to cure cancer if you moved them from the math department to a medical research lab? This is precisely the fallacy that the frontier labs are counting on to inflate their valuation as their IPO approaches. They want to use headline-grabbing problems in pure maths to make their models look "smart" in the public eye. But what does "smartness" in mathematics really mean in terms of economic value? It is not at all obvious whether success in abstract mathematics should translate to successes and, more importantly, profitability, in more grounded endeavors.
Look at OpenAI's job postings (https://openai.com/careers/search/). Those roles involve far more pedestrian yet profitable duties than research mathematics. So why isn't OpenAI automating them with their vaunted models? Success in one field, no matter how "difficult", does not predict results in another field.
> The fact is these fields are supported by society because of the benefits to everyone else. Once the same results can be achieved in a cheaper and faster way that is what will be done.
Maybe it's worth double checking that you know how these fields benefit everyone else? Proving the blowup of the Navier Stokes equations in 3D isn't going to make your gas cheaper or make harvesting food easier or make drones easier to protect against. Maybe consider the deeper effects at work?
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Why don't we first assume OpenAI can create a cold fusion reactor and then give them a trillion dollars to get it done?
Chess is even more mainstream and accessible now!