Comment by FiniteIntegral
2 days ago
Who has the political authority and/or social power to "do math"?
The issue with "doing math" is the incentive infrastructure. Modern mathematics research has always been tied with leveraging increasingly potent and numerous computing resources. With LLMs the experts are doing what they do best -- utilizing the latest and greatest. OpenAI leveraged an internal model and investment capital most people couldn't hope to touch. That is a display of strength and privilege.
It's motivated by cold hard cash instead of being driven by it. OpenAI wants more investors, more fuel for the fire, and this is how the company has decided to get it done. Token costs have increased, but so has general usage in the population. This is a PR campaign.
Isn't this the entire point of universities hiring celebrity mathematicians, giving them very light teaching loads, and access to millions in hardware that they would not otherwise have access to? Same for Chem/Bio/Phys/etc?
If Harvard Mathematician(s) Solve More Open Problems, then Harvard gets more (students, money). They then use some of that money for bonuses and some of it to reinvest in yet more solving that yields yet more (students, money).
Different Unis specialize in different fields not because the Uni itself is particularly fond of a certain field but because they see a gap in the market that they believe they can leverage. If there's a demand for say robotics that isn't being served particularly well elsewhere, an org like MIT sees that and capitalizes in order to bolster their finances more efficiently than their other departments are doing.
Both OpenAI and Leading Uni can say it's about the love of the game, but neither will allow a project that does not appear to be capable of bearing fruit to continue past the point that it appears to be likely to yield a positive ROI. This is why professors have to track their spending and apply for budgets and project approvals just like lead researchers at companies; so that the review board can protect the investment pool.
The only difference, historically, has been that Unis have openly provided results where for profit orgs have jealously guarded them. This provides room for an argument that the Unis are providing something to the public that the corps aren't. But OpenAI and others getting in to STEM are providing at least some open results to the public, and in a timely matter. On this front alone, then OpenAI et al are doing more for society than say a corporation that would not have provided it's proof of navier-stokes to the public free of charge.
> Modern mathematics research has always been tied with leveraging increasingly potent and numerous computing resources.
Why do you need to have potent and numerous computing resources to do math? Engineering could be that. But when I think about math the only thing that comes to my mind is a pen and a piece of paper. Not computing power nor even a calculator.
Modern mathematics research can involve CPU intensive tools like mathlib, lean proof assistant.