Comment by intended
18 hours ago
If your only measure of advancing is getting an answer, but not building the capability to understand it, then civilization has advanced.
It’s not a human focused civilization, which is where the issue comes up.
As an example: A constant issue I am seeing with AI productivity is that the most productive use of AI is when it is paired with more experienced users, while AI also does more work for entry level workers, if not replacing them entirely. It has become a question where will the future buffer of experienced seniors come from.
This is an example of where simply chopping down trees for today, doesn’t make civilization better off tomorrow.
AI is producing more content than ever before, but our ability to understand and verify it is not keeping pace.
We don’t know if these are unsolvable problems at this stage. Society could come up with workarounds and solutions to these issues in several years.
The request to stop, is part of the process by which the issues are debated and solutions found. It doesn’t mean their position is weird or moot.
If someone gets the answer sooner than you, that doesn't inhibit you developing your understanding of the answer privately the same way you would have done if they hadn't got the answer. I don't see how anybody loses by the answer being discovered sooner.
Not true. If I know the answer to a puzzle, I don't spend the time doing the puzzle.
If there is a prize associated with doing a puzzle, and a machine does it, then what incentive is there to pursue it.
Again, if you are only concerned with the outcome, and you have a preferred answer that you want (in this case "just use AI to advance faster"), then any information that doesn't support that case is useless or misguided at worst.
I am not trying to dissuade you from your preference. I am flagging that there is a set of other factors that influence the behavior of others, how that behavior is critical to the creation of expertise and drive, and thus why others hold different positions.
If you're concerned with something other than the answer, then the fact that the answer is already known hasn't actually provided the thing you're concerned about, so you can still do the thing you are concerned about.
If another human was likely to get the answer before you would you also discourage them from doing it because they would rob you of the chance to do the thing you're concerned about?
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If someone spends their entire career not solving the puzzle, did they really learn to understand how to solve it?
They may very well have learned plenty of things and solved or discovered other puzzles, but if the first puzzle is worth pursuing because the solution is actually useful it seems liked we're better off with the solution than a bunch of failed attempts.
That said, I do question the value of solving many of these types of math problems. I'm no mathematician so I'm assuming I'm wrong here, but on the surface many seem mostly theoretical puzzles with little or no practical use.
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But isn't all of schooling literally learning solutions others solved before us?
We spend most of our young lives (many of us our entire lives) studying physics, math, etc. that others have solved. (e.g Quantum Mechanics, Relativity, Calculus, etc.)
Biology consists, almost entirely, of studying solved problems in nature.
Aren't AI breakthroughs just more to study?
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