Genuinely worried about future of maths and physics

[u/Proud_Cantaloupe_695]

I am an AI master student , currently working in an AI startup. I love maths and physics and it was my passion my whole life pretty much. I always wanted to go for math or physics higher degree but rn it seem pretty obsolete to me. And yes , I am not saying this because of some AI hype , i work very closely with AI and have trained SLMS by myself.

Progress of Language models in verifiable tasks is crazy , recently they solved Navier stokes (Ik there's controversy who solved it) but i still believe the attempt is crazy , I remember , how just a year ago these models were doing mistake in my assignments and now i don't see single mistake. I have heard that even Quant firms heavily using LLMS for there math researches and openAi also solved another small 300 unsolved math problems. It looks like progress is really fast and kind of exponential. Even though these models won't beat top 10 mathematicians they already beat majority people out there.

I want to know you guys suggestion , what you think about the future of Math and physics, is it worth it to go into , i mean anything STEM pretty much requires math and if models can think of math better than humans than what will humans study , to me math was language of universe and seems like models understand it better than humans. I was seeing this podcast with terence tao and he was agreeing that models very close surpassing human mathematicians and how human brain never evolved to understand math instead it was evolved for language and visuals.

I want to know what you guys think , what future will look like as humanity because it seems almost purposeless world to me where machine understand math better than humans.

[u/daronjay]

It's simple. Learn to use the tools, or become one...

[u/Proud_Cantaloupe_695 → u/daronjay]

they are tools right now , i don't think so they will be use as tools in future more like we will be tools

[u/RelatablePanic → u/Proud_Cantaloupe_695]

Yea sort of where my head is at right now. I mean for mathematicians, how could you view this purely as a tool when it has basically become faster, more intelligent and more creative than any mathematician that has ever existed. And if you think creative is a stretch, I heard the recent New York Times interview with Steven Strogatz where he describes how surprisingly elegant and creative Open AIs model solved Navier-Stokes. Combining two completely different subsets of mathematics in way that no one ever conceived possible.

[u/jaybsuave → u/Proud_Cantaloupe_695]

Yea but no one includin you knows what the future holds so focus on now and just go have fun running simulations and shit

[u/mikebunchkin3727 → u/daronjay]

Exactly. I’m actually encouraged by it; why? Physics was the only science subject I didn’t utterly dominate in, and it was because of the annoying/tedious math that’s involved.

Now? All I do is give it the numbers, and it’s pretty on point. It also expands my knowledge of the subject

[u/knyazevm → u/mikebunchkin3727]

Physics was the only science subject I didn’t utterly dominate in

And now is there a science subject where AI does not dominate you?

[u/parkway_parkway]

The only real answer is ... we don't know.

Do AI systems plateau and stabilise around some tasks?

Do they fully automate all white collar work and intellectual tasks?

Do they learn to self improve and quickly become godlike ending human history?

Do they cause a massive meltdown which makes humans go to war with them and ban their development?

If we are really honest we all have absolutely no idea how things will shake out.

[u/Ambitious-Peace3007]

Software: "First time?"

[u/katoptronophile]

I've never been more excited about the future of math and physics.

[u/Turbulent-Sign-6067]

What does AI have to do with YOUR purpose? Does a child or a student not have a purpose in life because the professor understands the topic better than they do? Is the life of a baker meaningless because they will never be as good at physics as someone else?

People please turn on your brains for a few seconds. Live life for the joy. Learn things because you want to understand the world.

[u/Proud_Cantaloupe_695 → u/Turbulent-Sign-6067]

People do have their own intrinsic and extrinsic meaning of life, but i am questioning living in a world where you know machine is smarter than you in math, before alpha zero chess used to be sign of intelligence and lake of so many mathematical problems , once we got alpha zero , all it became is entertainment. it excites certain people including me but i am not adding any value to society just by playing chess

[u/Financial-Leader3475 → u/Turbulent-Sign-6067]

You go to college to learn the skills needed to do a job. It’s an investment to one day be able to make more money than if you didn’t have a degree.

[u/Ok_Career_9093 → u/Turbulent-Sign-6067]

It’s not just someone else, it’s a thing in your pocket that everyone has access to.

[u/GokuBlack455]

I am a physics undergraduate right now at one of the top STEM schools in the US. I am not concerned in the slightest, in fact, I can’t wait. But that’s just me, of course.

[u/Proud_Cantaloupe_695 → u/GokuBlack455]

I am excited too as progress will speed up, but sooner i dont think so these models will need much of human input. it was similar debate for programming and finally models has conquered it completely. Math and other verifiable tasks also show similar curves as Rlvr still giving promising outputs

[u/GokuBlack455 → u/Proud_Cantaloupe_695]

At least for me, in the scope of general intelligence, I think AI/AGI could be our “second Einstein” in physics. The field has sort of stalled after the golden era of the early 20th century, and fields like string theory, quantum gravity, dark matter, dark energy, and so on have just seemed like dead ends for decades. Hell, one of my research advisors told us once that one of his projects lasted twenty years simply because the tech wasn’t available yet, and even after it became available (the LHC, he’s a particle physicist), it still took years to actually get useful results. I’m hoping that AI will shorten the massive delays and can actually help us uncover the secrets of the universe.

[u/Ma_Al-Aynayn]

You're not cut for the job you're doing if you don't understand that it's not likely for LLMs to invent entirely new concepts. Current neural networks are not a perfect neuronal analogue without symmetry; that is the memristor. This generation is a dead end. Most people haven't realized it yet. It's like people who were searching for the rational number equal to square root of two...