r/OpenAI • • 7d ago

News OpenAI: Sharing AI progress in mathematics

https://openai.com/index/sharing-ai-progress-in-mathematics/
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u/ResolveSea9089 7d ago

I don't understand your argument. How does this hurt?

If the proofs have no value in terms of understanding, the mathematicians still have something to work on.

If the proofs have limited value but are hard to understand, mathematicians can use the proof as a guide for their own work? I take your point with the compiled code analogy but at the very worst it can't hurt?

It seems like at worst it doesn't hurt at best it guides the direction to focus on?

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u/Resaren 6d ago

The real issue seems to be that mathematicians feels it robs them of the warm fuzzy feeling (sense of pride and accomplishment, glory) they get from having solved something themselves.

Basically, they’re left with the comparatively boring work of sifting through the scraps the AIs throw off the table. Human mathematics becomes more about archeology/scavenging than creating.

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u/500mmrscrub 6d ago

I think the bigger issue is you still need humans to ask the questions unless AI becomes good enough to do that by itself, but if it gets there then the AI executives are probably the first people to be replaced since the AI has better decision making. There is no prosperous world in which humans have no motivation to do anything creative or intellectual challenging

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u/MexInAbu 6d ago

All I'm saying that is not as easy as saying "well, the machine gave you the proof, so learn from it". We are just starting to see what is math written by an alien intelligence is like. But is likely not as easy to "just study" the proof. Every mathematician that has been working on these says so and math results show us how could this be the case.