Comment by jazzyjackson
9 hours ago
:/
IMO that there is any work at all to build from is the result of a long tradition of taking the next step. Professor to student and so on. The danger of AI here is we get to take a leap, say, 10 steps - but then there is no more tradition to have the fortitude and mentoring necessary to continue the progress.
It all gets derailed while betting on RSI and never having to do math research again (but if an advanced theorem is proven, and no one alive is competent enough to comprehend it, does it even matter that we get to call it solved?)
> if an advanced theorem is proven, and no one alive is competent enough to comprehend it, does it even matter
For any applied mathematics: of course it matters if I can use a better algorithm for $PROBLEM. Yes, even if I do not understand it (I'd like a LEAN certificate tho)! As for pure mathematics, it can be argued that it never mattered in the first place.
This is why the AI companies are making money off selling tokens and raking in investments for as long as it will work and is not looking to create the value themselves and making money off it...
They know that value creation is a dead end sooner or later..
If we suddenly skipped 10 generations of mathematical lineage because of AI, wouldn’t it also be smart enough that you could just prompt it to connect ideas from graduate level maths all the way to the proof!
no. That's not a given at all? I think most reasonably people now agree that AI intelligence is spiky, that is to say, there are some areas it is amazingly good, and some areas where it spectacularly fails.
One of these areas it's not good at is sadly it's social ability. It's terrible at explaining things - just try asking ask it to explain code !
wdym? ai is great at explaining things; it's one of the primary use-cases outside of programming.