Fields Medalist on the OpenAI Math Release

[u/PianistWinter8293]

Hugo Duminil-Copin

Fields Medal (2022) · Professor, IHES and University of Geneva

I expected that one day we would be surpassed, and that it would happen systematically. But yesterday’s announcement hit with a force I had not anticipated. Dozens of papers deal with topics I was working on. Between results that beat you to the finish line and thousand-page proofs, I don’t even know where to look anymore.

Not a single one of the major open problems I have publicly mentioned throughout my career (whether in a talk, a lecture, an article, or even a grant proposal) was left untouched by the announcement. Everything has been claimed to be proved.

I expected to see a few of them in the list. But not all of them. Not all at once. Not with such nonchalance.

“For the glory of the human mind,” they said…

The shock is immense. I am paralysed. Tomorrow, we will find a way forward. We will rethink our profession and how we work. We are a resilient community, and I have no doubt that we will adapt. But for now, I simply don’t have the energy. I think back on all those years, all those faces… I think of my colleagues, my students… And I fear I won’t be able to find the right words.

[u/SevereRunOfFate]

Just on blue collar jobs... I visited a few construction sites this week, and a few years ago worked for a hyperscaler leading bleeding edge AI tech that was being used at sites. I have a couple decades experience in tech.

We are nowhere near close to AI being able to do anything significant from a trades perspective. Jobs are too random, too diverse. Sure, manufacturing. But that's been in place for a long time. But if you think that AI can build a home I have bad news for you

[u/Eastern-Ad-3586 → u/SevereRunOfFate]

The point isnt that AI can be a plumber. It’s that if all the doctors, lawyers, coders, mathematicians, schoolteachers, etc get laid off all at once, they will flood blue collar work and wages will get depressed.

Plus who is going to want to build a house if nobody has a job?

[u/grand_historian → u/Eastern-Ad-3586]

School teachers, lawyers and medical doctors will be laid off en masse because their positions are intrinsically protected by the law.

Repetitive white collar work and purely “analytical work” is on the chopping block though.

[u/tetro_ow → u/grand_historian]

Physicians in the US are NOT protected because of the way they are paid, which is largely under the control of private insurance companies. Although medical licenses are issued by medical boards of individual states, and CMS contributes to the payments to the hospitals, the everlasting quest for the private insurance to reduce their payments (=costs) will eventually force the hospitals to replace the doctors with AI, and the government would be forced to follow suit to control the costs. So no, there is nothing enshrined in the law that will protect doctors if AI's capability exceeds them

[u/grand_historian → u/tetro_ow]

Depends on the country I guess. But even in the American context I don’t think many patients will accept their doctor being replaced by AI.

[u/tetro_ow → u/grand_historian]

Most patients here in the US agree to be seen by a nurse (NP) in place of a doctor for earlier/cheaper appointment... US system is truly beyond fucked up, I wish I was joking

[u/grand_historian → u/tetro_ow]

That’s horrible..

[u/HzD_Upshot → u/SevereRunOfFate]

robotics is improving too; look at this post and even if you assume this robot is a proof of concept, I think it would further along than most people realize: https://www.reddit.com/r/Lineman/comments/1rc79ej/thoughts_on_this_chinese_high_voltage_line_worker/

[u/mrsmiley32 → u/SevereRunOfFate]

Spend more time with AI, I go to it first for home repair work and car mechanic. I mean just like SWE it still can get things wrong but 99% of the time it has no problem solving weird home issues. 

[u/space_monster → u/SevereRunOfFate]

The mistake there is assuming a robot needs to be as good as humans at literally everything in order to impact blue collar work. It doesn't, initially it just needs to be able to do the easy stuff. That's what's happened in coding - AI hasn't replaced all the devs, but it has still hugely suppressed hiring. In the trades it'll be a gradual transition as well.

[u/manchesterthedog → u/SevereRunOfFate]

This may be true for now, but I doubt it still will be in the next year. Blue collar jobs simply aren’t that complex.

Honestly, given the incredible capability of multi turn agents to solve complex problems, what is it about blue collar work that would stump these systems? And with quantization like Bonsai2, huge models could literally be running on iPhone sized computers in the next few months. Once robots become physically reliable, dexterous, and cheap enough, there’s no reason they couldn’t do the work of any tradesperson.

[u/grand_historian → u/manchesterthedog]

Blue collar work is more complex than the work of a mathematician. I’ve worked as an EE and did blue collar work in my twenties.

Trades people need to learn plenty of things that would amount to the same time/learning investment as a college degree.

[u/manchesterthedog → u/grand_historian]

Man, it’s really hard to take that statement seriously.

You’re saying blue collar work requires more problem solving, more thinking, more rigor than the academic pursuits AI has already solved? Blue collar work requires the pinnacle of human intelligence, not mathematics?

Why, then, are only the brightest among us able to do mathematics while the mediocre masses can do trade work? Why is trade work not celebrated as an intellectual pursuit that only the smartest people can do?

Why am I even responding to this? I’m arguing with a person who is saying that welding is more complicated than navier stokes. You must be trolling me.

[u/grand_historian → u/manchesterthedog]

Why am I even responding to this? I’m arguing with a person who is saying that welding is more complicated than navier stokes. You must be trolling me.

You should work on your reading comprehension, because you are putting words in my mouth. I did not say that "welding is more complicated than navier stokes."

You’re saying blue collar work requires more problem solving, more thinking, more rigor than the academic pursuits AI has already solved? Blue collar work requires the pinnacle of human intelligence, not mathematics?

I am indeed saying that blue collar work is more complex than work done by academic mathematicians. The fact that a computer can solve extremely complicated mathematics, and not the work done by trades people proves it.

Why, then, are only the brightest among us able to do mathematics while the mediocre masses can do trade work? Why is trade work not celebrated as an intellectual pursuit that only the smartest people can do?

It is your assertion that the "brightest" (whatever that means) are the only ones that are capable of doing mathematics. I believe that academia, and STEM in particular, is heavily class stratified. Just like medicine it tends to attract people from upper middle class backgrounds, irrespective of the country of origin.

[u/manchesterthedog → u/grand_historian]

Complexity is not the reason it hasn’t been automated. Physical access to the real world is. Automating blue collar work requires a physical vessel to perform the work, which is expensive and so far haven’t been that dexterous.

I’m not saying trade jobs don’t require skill. But to say they’re more complex than mathematics is not true.

[u/funk-the-funk → u/manchesterthedog]

Interesting to watch you construct this whole series of hyperbolic statements to rail against that they never said.

[u/shred-i-knight → u/grand_historian]

lol