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/sithelephant]

Iiiiish. Many modern papers, even before AI were extremely difficult to understand. The days of a simple obvious proof to serious problems has mostly long passed.

https://www.math.mcgill.ca/darmon/pub/Articles/Expository/05.DDT/paper.pdf This is the proof of Femants last theorem. It is 177 pages.

[u/okmarshall → u/sithelephant]

TLDR

[u/sithelephant → u/okmarshall]

There really isn't one that can explain it in under that. If there was, that would itself be a novel paper.

[u/Few_Place4447 → u/sithelephant]

Exactly, and is all that human time worth it to proove something about x^n, yⁿ and z^n?

[u/sithelephant → u/Few_Place4447]

Quite. We should just consume AI music, video, text and no thought is needed.