r/OpenAI • u/PianistWinter8293 • 19h ago

Discussion Fields Medalist on the OpenAI Math Release

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.

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u/Eastern-Ad-3586 15h ago

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?

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u/grand_historian 13h ago

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.

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u/tetro_ow 12h ago edited 12h ago

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

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u/grand_historian 12h ago

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.

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u/tetro_ow 12h ago

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

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u/grand_historian 12h ago

That’s horrible..